


Zombie Cat

by Fredegund



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Cat Wade Wilson, Happy Peter Parker, Hurt Wade Wilson, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Wade Wilson, Protective Peter Parker, Wade Wilson Breaking the Fourth Wall, Wade Wilson Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28496034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fredegund/pseuds/Fredegund
Summary: Wade Wilson has spent the past few decades cursed as a cat, uglier than ever and still unable to die. By the time Spider-Man finds him dead in a dumpster with a sack tied around his head, Wade's pretty much a feral, panicked mess, the voices loud and unceasing, his brain filled up with some Very Not Nice memories. He's any self-respecting pet owner's worst nightmare, a fugly embodiment of all things disgusting, too wild to be kept, too damaged to trust.Peter Parker sure gives it his best try, though.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Wade Wilson, Peter Parker/Wade Wilson
Comments: 106
Kudos: 583





	1. cones and catnip

1\. cones and catnip

-

-

-

Wade Wilson wants to go home.

It’s an ache under his ribcage, a siren’s call in the distance. A yearning that has his mutilated body shivering, that has loud, mournful meows echoing into the night. It’s hard to take in air, harder still to see through the tiny holes in the sack that’s wrapped around his head, that’s tied around his neck. He’s been pawing at it for hours, now, thrashing to try and loosen it, shake it off. But they pulled his nails out one yank at a time before they tossed him here, laughing as Wade wailed at them, their eyes hard and cruel. What remains of his paws are bloody, useless stumps, throbbing pulses of pain even when he’s still. He can’t claw the sack off. Throwing himself at the nearest hard surface only makes everything hurt worse, fur scraping against the dirty, rusted inside of the dumpster, and the sack refuses to budge.

He’s – stuck.

It’s happened before. He’s been buried in boxes, wrapped in plastic bags, suffocated.

It’s happened before.

Still.

Wade Wilson wants to go home.

[You don’t have one.]

[[Never had one, not really.]]

[Kinda surprised you even know the word, tbh.]

His tail’s broken, crooked and limp, aches that send shooting pain through him when he tries to move it. The ground shifts under him as he wiggles, old cans and soggy boxes crinkling. Flies buzz overhead, the heat of midday bearing down on him. He’s been wailing for a long time. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that nobody is going to respond. He knows people are passing, can hear that background murmur nearby, the hustle and bustle of a crowded sidewalk and an even more crowded city street. Horns honking, tires rolling across the pavement, people calling for taxis and doors slamming shut. He can even hear them approach, sometimes, footsteps loud as they step closer. He wails harder when those footsteps retreat, wails to cover up the sound of them speaking, their pitying murmurs, their disgusted tones.

“Somebody threw it away,” they say.

“Who would do that to an animal?” Shock, pity, disgust.

“Sickos, that’s who.”

“Should we try to –” Hesitation.

“Nah, look at it. It’s not gonna make it anyway.”

“Poor bastard.”

“Ugly thing, innit? I bet they covered its face like that so they didn’t have to look at it –”

“If its face is anything like the rest of it, best keep it covered.”

Some say he smells like death, which – true. Rude, but true. A couple have thrown up near the dumpster before they’re able to beat a hasty retreat. He knows what they’re seeing, knows it’s not good. Roadkill tends to make people sick, and he’s roadkill that just so happens to be alive right now. It’s a wonder everyone doesn’t upchuck at the smells alone, let alone the sight. He feels those maggots on him even now, wonders if they’re still inside him, still squirming their way through his exposed stomach, or if maybe it’s all phantom itches and phantom aches. His ears are flat against his head as he whines through the sack, his voice weakening. Wade lays down in the trash, finally, all his energy sapped, his meows muffled as they taper off slowly. He’s moments away from death again, can feel himself greying around the edges. White and Yellow aren’t speaking anymore. Death hangs in every labored breath, hangs in the stifled, heated air.

He thinks he hears a soft _thwip_ , something landing on the ground, falling from the rooftops?

A quiet voice. Wade can’t make it out. His ears are ringing. Everything’s muffled.

His chest caves in on one last exhale.

It is not a peaceful rest.

-

-

-

It’s an even less peaceful wake up.

One second it’s all hellfire and brimstone licking at his fur, flesh burning away as he screams a human scream, high-pitched and panicked. The next second he’s waking up to a bright white light in a bright white room, human’s hands poking at his stomach with a needle, stitching him up. He shrieks and flies off the cold metal table, throwing his body into a cart that crashes into the wall, tools raining down to the ground in a shower of broken glass and sharp instruments. Pressing himself into the corner, everything still aching and white-hot pain, Wade’s wide eyes dart around the room from person to person. Ears flat against his head, he bares his fangs at a woman who’s edging closer, hisses at her. She holds her hands up and freezes in place, wide-eyed right along with him. There’s a nametag on her t-shirt and gloves on her hands.

When her head tilts to the left, looking at the other human, Wade hisses again.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she says, hands where he can see them.

“Okay?” the other human says, all high-pitched and shaking. He’s round in the face, greasy hair that hangs in front of his beady little eyes. There’s a nametag on his t-shirt, too, the gaudy yellow shirt a perfect match to the woman’s. Wade can smell his own blood on the man’s gloves, eyes the needle the man’s holding out in front of him like a teeny tiny sword. “He was just dead two seconds ago! This is not okay!”

[Oh God oh god oh god we gotta get outa here they’re gonna –]

[[– experiment on the cat that just came back to life? Hell yes they are why is that door shut –]]

[Run away! Abort! YEET!]

“He obviously wasn’t dead,” the woman says, gesturing toward him.

Wade jumps at the sweep of her hand, snapping his teeth and hissing again.

Her hands refreeze. She swallows. “He’s – he must have been – just, weak pulse.”

“Pretty sure I’d have been able to feel a weak pulse,” the man protests.

“What are you even arguing right now? You think it came back from the grave?” For all her furious whispering, for all the exasperation in her tone, she remains still, nothing but her eyes moving as she rolls them. “This isn’t Pet Cemetery, George. The cat’s clearly not dead. Let’s worry about the very alive, very gnarly animal who’s terrified right now, yeah? Should we… phone animal control? He looks a little – feral? I can’t imagine his quality of life being very grand after all – that. We should – should we put him out of his misery? His insides are still kinda – outside.”

The man takes a step toward Wade, a few steps.

Wade presses his back as close as it’ll get to the wall, tries to burrow inside it and make himself small, his heart jackrabbiting in his chest, breaths coming out panting. His dry tongue hangs from his mouth, cold in the open air. White and Yellow are all yelling noise in his head, screaming at him to bite, bite, run, run, or else panicking about being stuck in a lab again. They can’t do it again, they won’t make it through, they’ll bite anyone who tries to keep them there, they’ll bite down and not let go –

“Be careful,” the woman says.

The man crouches in front of Wade, holds out a hand. Wade snaps his teeth at it, and it retreats, but only for a moment before he’s holding it out again. Wade hisses a long, slow hiss that won’t stop, his throat dry and cracking and sore, bats a paw toward the hand and instantly regrets the motion. He’s declawed, his paws all swollen, bloodied messes, all throbbing agony that makes his eyes water. He curls the paw back under his body and bares his teeth at the man instead, his throat rumbling with another hiss.

“C’mon, man,” the man entreats. “I gotta finish stitching up your stomach.”

Wade growls, eyes swiveling to that needle that’s still in the man’s other gloved hand.

“You think talking to it like it’s a person is gonna help?” the woman says from somewhere behind him. The man’s crouched too close, so close that Wade can’t see the woman anymore. She could be doing anything back there, and he wouldn’t be able to _see_ – “It’s too scared right now. We need to call –”

“Well how about Spider-Man? He’s still out there, right? Can you pop your head out and check?”

“What could Spider-Man do?”

“He fights giant lizard people and shit,” the man says, eyes still focused on Wade. “I figure he could probably wrangle a feral cat. Web him up, maybe, so we can finish fixing him. He’ll be happy to know the zombie cat’s alive, anyway, he sounded real concerned through that mask. Can you just –”

“Huh.” Her voice sounds further away now. “You don’t usually have such good ideas.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Wade shifts a little, pressing his head low to the ground to see through the man’s crouched legs. The woman’s at the door now, the only door in the room, with her hand on the knob. As soon as she cracks it open, Wade rolls his shoulders and pounces in between the man’s legs, bloodied paws slipping over the cold tiles as he growls and makes a run for it. The man yelps somewhere behind him, falling on his ass, but Wade’s ten steps away from sweet freedom and he can’t look back. He honestly might black out in the daring escape, can’t really remember what happens from one moment to the next. His head’s too full of voices and screaming and pain. Everything is bright, disorienting. He’s not in the sack anymore, but even now his vision fades in and out, foggy and wavering as he runs on damaged feet. Paws? Feet? Paws. The woman’s voice is loud and frantic, people in the next room yelping and lifting their legs onto their chairs to avoid him as he runs circles around the lobby, body thumping against sharp corners as he throws himself around, nowhere left to run. There’s another door that leads outside, sunlight streaming through the multicolored glass, but it’s shut tight. He throws himself into it a couple times, but he keeps slipping on blood and falling to the floor, growling and hissing at anything that moves.

Through hazy unfocused vision, he can see them.

They’re all yelling voices and sharp tones, grating and _big_ and –

[They’re gonna lock us up.]

[[They’re too big, we don’t have our claws, bite them, bite them –]]

[If we bite they’ll pull our teeth out.]

[[Try for the door again we need to get outa here, run run RUN]]

He tries to run again, throws himself at the front door, but the door only shakes a bit and stays shut. So he tries again, running in a clumsy slide against the red-streaked floor, but inches before he hits the door again, something sticky and tight wraps around his torso, pulls him back. He wails and growls, hisses as he wiggles, thrashing as he tries to twist himself in place to reach whatever’s trapping him and bite through it with his teeth. More soft thwips, white gunk that sticks his paws against his belly, secures him. White and Yellow go incoherent in their yelling, all white noise that blocks out everything around him. All he knows is he’s trapped now and humans only ever want one thing from a cat that can’t die and he can’t survive years in another lab, he won’t do it, he’ll die and die and die and it’ll be all endless white-hot pain that won’t fade, he can’t do this again, he can’t –

The panic makes it feel like his heart’s about to burst.

And then a hand comes down on his head.

He hisses again, tries to twist his neck through the white gunk to snap his teeth at the hand.

He’s terrifying to look at, an undead, big boned cat with more scabs than fur, with wide wild eyes, fangs bared in an endless hiss.

The human doesn’t flinch away, though.

A gloved hand – pets? Is this petting? The hand rubs in between his ears, back and forth, back and forth over his ruined skin, over the scabs and bald patches. The hand retreats for a second before it returns, this time gloveless, all warm flesh that drags soft over his patchy scalp. He’s too panicked to feel it at first, the touch too soft to register, but then nothing else happens for a long time. For a long time, a human hand just – rubs his head while Wade’s stuck to the floor covered in weird white gunk that pulls on what little remains of his fur anytime he wiggles. The boxes panic for a while, screaming still, but even they quiet down once nothing happens, once those hand rubs finally start to register through the fog of panic and pain. A human is touching him without gloves, no barrier at all to keep that hand clean, and it’s slow and soft and – isn’t stopping. Why isn’t it stopping?

[don’t stop, never stop, a little to the left –]

Wade tilts his head, a small, tiny movement. The hand runs coarse fingers into the crease where his left ear meets his head. His hisses, once loud and warning, quiet into a low timber, shoulders trying to roll through the white gunk.

He can – there’s a voice.

Has it been talking this whole time?

“– and that’s the last time I’ll ever ride the subway,” the voice is saying, a soft, quiet baritone. The hand never falters. Wade tilts his head again, craning his neck to try and get the human in his sight, but it’s an awkward angle and this gunk has him pretty well restrained. He meows in distress, the sticky stuff pulling on his fur, what little he’s got left. The voice shushes him, the hand rubbing over his other ear. “’m so glad you’re alive. When I found you in that dumpster, it… well, it didn’t look so good. But these nice people are gonna fix you up, yeah? You’ll get better. You’ve got a lot of fight in you.”

“Uh, Mister Spider-Man?”

The voice above him laughs. “Adding the mister just makes it sound silly.”

“Not as silly as I feel talking to a guy in full-body spandex right now.”

“Honestly, you get used to it.”

“Uh-huh.”

There’s a pause. Wade’s brain feels all sluggish, stuffed full of cotton, the panic from moments before having popped like a weighted balloon against this very warm hand that’s persistent on his head. People don’t pet Wade. Haven’t for – years. Decades? A long time. By all reasoning, the panic should still be in the forefront, trapped as he is in this – sticky stuff, stuck to the floor in a white, cold room, those humans with needles and gloves lurking somewhere. But he can’t move, and this hand is warm, makes Wade’s whole body ache for – more, makes his head butt into the palm of that hand, seeking out the warmth. It’s bizarre to seek out contact, even more bizarre when the man actually gives it, that hand both firm and soft against his head as it rubs around his scabs, offering up unhesitating touch. Weak and shaking, Wade meows under that hand, ducks his head as much as the white gunk will allow. The man’s hand follows him and keeps petting.

“We should probably talk about what you wanna do with this cat?”

The hand scratches light fingernails over his right ear. “Do with him?”

“I mean, it’s kinda feral, so. And hella banged up. Did you want us to give it a nice pain-free send off?”

[They’re talking about killing us again.]

[[No send off is pain-free, and the reentries _suck_.]]

[Do we have to die again?] White’s voice is small, _desperate_. [Can’t we just – live?]

Wade whimpers, distressed all over again, lets out a loud, growling meow. The hand soothes him, that voice making its shushing noises again. He can’t move enough to do anything about whatever these humans decide, one way or another. Not sure what he’d even pick if he had a choice. Living, dying, it’s all the same string of misery, the same pain that consumes. Fire in death or humans in life, it’s all just the _same_. White’s tired of dying, of that hell place where they’re burning, burning, burning. Wade’s tired of living, of the pain of it, of the constant back and forth between hope and crushed disappointment, hope and crushed disappointment. Even once they escaped the labs, it’s been nothing but pain, running, more pain. It’s been humans gawking at him or whispering about him or running him off with their loud, disgusted tones, their big, towering shapes.

“He seems strong enough to me,” the voice above him says. His voice is quiet, tone lowering. “You don’t think he can be – rehabilitated?”

“I mean, maybe? But I don’t think it’ll be easy to find an owner for this one.”

“I dunno, once he’s calmer, I bet someone’ll take him.”

[HA. Someone like the labs, with the flaying and the cutting and the –]

[[NOT AGAIN.]]

There’s another pause, this one stilted. The hand on his head stops moving, the weight of it settling against him. Wade pushes into it and those fingers scritch-scratch under his ear. The bone-deep exhaustion of having been so recently dead and having just used all his energy up trying to run is hitting him, threatening to pull him under. His eyes blink, heavy-lidded, dry tongue hanging limp out of his mouth. He wants to stay awake this time, has this hand that’s giving him scratches he needs to stay awake for. If he passes out now, he knows he’ll wake sometime later, and the hand will be gone. It’s a miracle it’s here at all.

The voice that’s further away sounds like the man with the needle, has that same high-pitched lilt. But he hesitates this time, his voice faltering as if responding to the looks he’s receiving as he speaks. “He’s kind of – I mean, just look at him. Older cats are a hard sell anyway, but this one’s a little… I mean, he’s kind of hideous?”

[[Gotta love that brutal honesty.]]

Wade can’t argue it.

But apparently the other voice can? “He’s not _hideous_. He’s _injured_.”

“Okay but, that hair might never grow back. Probably won’t, actually. It looks like he’s been in a fire, and that scar tissue isn’t gonna heal, dude. Um. Spider-Man. I’m not trying to be an asshole here, I’m just saying. People won’t want him. He’s more likely to scare potential owners away from the cats who actually do have a chance at being adopted. This one’s a lost –”

“I’d adopt him.”

Wade’s heart might have stopped.

“– cause… what? You’d really want – um. That?"

“ _Him_ ,” the voice above him stresses, that soft baritone flattening into something sharper. “He’s not a thing, _dude_. And yeah, I don’t see why not. He’s already calmed down; he likes the head scratches. Plus, I’ve been thinking about getting a pet. It’ll be great.”

“… I guess if anyone could handle a feral cat, it’d be a masked crime fighter.”

“He’s just been hurt.”

“Uh-huh, right. Still gonna need you to sign some waivers. We can’t guarantee this one won’t try to bite your face off.”

A – pet? Wade isn’t a pet. He’s – a lab experiment gone wrong. Something to study, run tests on. Humans run away from him on the streets. They throw up or throw things at him or – well, that sack tied around his head springs to mind. People don’t _adopt_ Wade Wilson. He’s unadoptable. And if he _is_ actually being adopted? There’s bound to be something wrong with this one. Even though the man’s hand is gentle and doesn’t seem to mind petting something as gross as Wade. Even though his voice is – calming, that laugh a pleasant thing he could stand to hear again. He even maybe smells good, a rich musk that’s just strong enough to filter through the coppery tang of blood in the air. Still. Only evil fucks with bad agendas take in Wade Wilson. Another shoe’s gonna drop somewhere.

[[Probably straight on our head.]]

[Merow.]

-

-

-

It’s a long, exhausting road from there.

He’s kept at the animal shelter for days, harrowing, panic-inducing days that he spends hissing at random yellow-shirt workers and pressed into the corner of the cage they got him set up in. It’s in the back corner of a room filled with other animals, animal crates that line the walls, the whole room a mess of piss and shit scents that grate against his senses. They do leave him alone there for the most part, uneasy around what the whole office has dubbed the ‘zombie cat.’ Spider-Man had helped them wrangle Wade back into the original room with the needles, and they’d stitched up his stomach, stuck a cone around his neck to keep him from messing with the bandages. As though he needed another thing to make him look even more ridiculous. The boxes have a field day with the fucking thing; they keep calling him conehead, the unoriginal nerds. His paws are wrapped up, too, and he feels itchy and sore and entirely too confined like this, too restricted. It isn’t anything like his neck and all four legs being strapped to a table or having his mouth pried open with a speculum, but it’s no cakewalk either. By day three, he thinks he might lose his mind.

[Already lost, bro.]

[[Yeah, that ship’s done sailed across the galaxy.]]

Some of the workers will stop and talk through the bars to some of the other felines, stick their hands inside the bars to pet them. They’re cute, too, even the grown cats a few inches smaller than Wade, who’s been big and ugly from the beginning. There’s this one long-haired tabby who everybody stops for, with their cooing baby voices and their soft hands that coax the cat toward them. People slip it treats and these truly heinous little cat toys, the loser. Nobody chats with Wade, though, which is fine. More than fine, really. He’d bite them if they tried to stick their hands inside his little metal prison. Or he’d try to through the cone, anyway. When they do need to change his bandages or check the sutures, they wear these giant leather gloves that his fangs can’t penetrate. They also stand as close to the cage door as possible and block the exit, keeping him wrangled inside the thing. They needn’t have bothered; he tried running already and look how that turned out. Also, he’s not in a lab and nobody’s talking like he’ll end up in one, so he’s fine staying in the corner of this cage, eating the wet food they stick inside the little food flap. It’s more than he’s eaten consistently since he was turned into a cat in the first place.

And, well, there’s also Spider-Man.

[[As long as that fine ass keeps coming, we’ll be staying.]]

[Oh sure, the ass is great. Those _hands_ , tho.]

[[Magic fingers fo’ sho’.]]

[Never met a spider I didn’t wanna munch on.]

[[Still haven’t.]]

Whereas none of the animal shelter humans stop to talk through the bars at him like they do with the other cats, Spider-Man’s come to visit once, twice, sometimes three times a day. Passing all the beautiful cats and adorable, doe-eyed kittens, the blue and red wall crawler strides straight to Wade, pulls up a chair and sits outside the cage. Wade is still skeptical, of course. The man looks – suspicious, for one thing, wearing that full-body suit with the mask that keeps him covered head to toe. He can think of a few reasons to wear a mask, none of them good. But he’s heard the shelter employees’ gossip; he can pick up what they’re putting down. Spider-Man’s a friendly neighborhood _superhero_ , if what they say is true. If only the _hero_ knew what he was trying to save this time.

During the first visit, Spidey tried poking one hand through the bars.

Wade bared his fangs and gave a warning hiss.

He hasn’t tried the hand trick since.

Spider-Man sits with him and tells him stories, those white slanted mask eyes giving nothing away. Wade doesn’t like how he can see his own reflection in them, hates seeing what Spidey must be seeing, his patchwork fur, the burns, the _cone_ [lame ass]. His voice is warm, though, all soft and sweet. Maybe he’s blind under the mask. He tells him about a bank robbery he stopped last night, webbing up the bad guys and hanging them upside down outside the police station. A lady at the ATM outside had insisted on buying him thank-you waffles, so he’d spent a couple hours learning all about her great-grandkids and stuffing face, mask rolled up to his nose. He’s not usually one to stick around and chat with locals in the costume, he tells Wade, then leans in close to the bars of the cage and whispers, “But I’ve got this cat who’s keeping me in costume pretty regularly right now, so.”

Wade feels himself untensing the longer Spider-Man stays and talks, until he’s relaxed enough to lay his head down on his wrapped paws and close his eyes, still in the furthest corner of the cage. When he realizes what he’s doing, though, his whole body shakes, heart racing all over again as he snaps awake and hisses at the hero, wide-eyed and trembling. The spandex-clad man makes those same shushing noises from that first day. He sits very still as he coos at Wade through the bars.

“You can fall asleep while I’m blabbing,” he says, his voice too gentle, too – sad. Still no baby voice to be had, which is nice. Not that people ever try using that voice on him in the first place, he’s too big and ugly to inspire sweet voices, but he’s heard it for days and days now directed at the other cats and it’s fucking _annoying_. “You’re safe with me, big guy.”

[[This does not compute.]]

Wade’s heart feels too fast, still, the cone itching around his neck.

White’s nothing more than a weepy wreck in his head.

[[Loser.]]

“Your collar said your name is Deadpool,” Spider-Man says, apropos of nothing.

Wade tenses all over again hearing his name, thinking of that collar, ears perking up at the sound of that name falling from Spidey’s lips. He hisses, paws batting at the air in front of him. His nails have been steadily regrowing, faster now that he’s being fed regular meals, and they itch something fierce under the gauze. He rubs one against the floor, a loud, warning _mer-ow_ that has Spider-Man sitting back in his chair and rubbing one gloved hand under his masked chin.

“Don’t like the bandages, huh?”

Wade hisses again, rubs his other paw against the floor.

Spidey watches him through the bars with those unfathomable white lenses. “With the way I found you, I’m pretty sure you must have had some shitty people in your life, but you seem to recognize Deadpool, so I guess we’ll keep it for now. Maybe work on finding something less morbid that you’ll respond to, though, yeah? Not that it’s not an awesome name. If you’re digging it we’ll keep it. We don’t all love the people who give us our names, after all. Just, I guess we’ll work on it. Keep the whole name change thing in mind as a possibility? You’ve definitely got Deadpool vibes going on. It’s a fighter’s name. Um.” Spidey fidgets in place, hands twisting together on his lap. Wade and the boxes are – quiet. Tired. Spidey seems to be waiting for some cosmic sign or something, watching him, but Wade’s thoroughly unwilling to make talking to a cat easy on him. After an awkward pause where they stare at each other, the silence broken only by random cats meowing in the background or Wade thumping his itchy, bound paws against the floor, Spidey clears his throat and then changes the subject. “Anyway, I think they’ll let you come home soon. You’re healing pretty fast.”

[Some might say inhumanly fast.]

[[…in _cat_ ly fast?]]

[That sounds fucking stupid.]

[[ _You’re_ fucking stupid.]]

[We’re all fucking stupid, how ‘bout that.]

[[Cat-sh me outside, how ‘bout that.]]

[… also, did you guys just hear where he said he’d be taking us home soon?]

[[… I figured we’d hallucinated that part. First rule of hallucinations: don’t mention the hallucinations.]]

“Think you’ll let me pet your head?” Spidey’s voice is soft, inquisitive, wondering. He’s slow about it, but his gloved hand moves toward Wade’s bars one inch at a time, stopping every so often and staring at Wade, who’s holding himself very still, his feline body trembling without permission from his brain. He liked that hand on him before, he remembers. But it didn’t have the glove on that time. Also that was _days_ ago; his feline brain distrusts it, sees it as a threat. Wade waits until Spider-Man’s fingertips touch on the edge of the bars before he bares sharp teeth at him and hisses, ears flat on his head again.

The hand instantly retreats. “Very solid no, gotcha.”

[He sure gives up fast.]

[[Course he’d give up fast; we’re _gnarly_ bro. No way he actually wanted to pet us.]]

[True. The pretty lie’s sure a break from the norm, though.]

[[Well, I for one hate it. These pretty lies are gonna get the big guy’s hopes up.]]

[… and you… _care_ … about that?]

[[… ‘m just tired, is all. It’ll pass.]]

[God I _hope_ so.]

Wade watches through slitted eyes as the costumed man sits back in the seat and starts talking again, picks up the one-sided conversation like he’s used to talking to himself. Stuck in the cage, in the cone, in the wrappings, he feels more feline than human right now, all itchy and twitchy and flighty, his brain all filled up by voices and noise and more voices. And he _is_ tired, just like Yellow, all bone-deep and all-consuming. He wants to lay there and do nothing. Lucky for him, that’s what cats do. So, that’s what he does. He lays his head back on his paws, wiggling to alleviate a random itch here and there, his crooked tail curled up behind him, back pressed against the wall. He lets the human’s sweet baritone drone ever onward. It’s – maybe a little pleasant, to hear someone speaking to him this way. Strange, but pleasant. He’s glad to be a feline without human vocal cords right now, though, pretty sure he’d say all the wrong things and instantly ruin it if he tried responding. This is perfect, being able to listen without the pressure to participate. He relaxes a little, breaths coming slower, deeper, calmer.

A shelter employee steps into the room to check on another cat down the row. Wade twitches his ears, eyes tracking the woman who seems to be listening to Spidey talk, trying to be all subtle as she angles her body away from them but keeps turning to glance their way.

Spider-Man appears not to notice.

Still, he waits until she leaves the room to pull something small out from a crease in the suit, near his hip. Wade’s nose twitches. It – that little thing smells like – well, nothing he’s ever smelled before, but it perks his ears up anyway. He lifts his head, sniffing the air, eyes watchful and wary as Spidey inches that little thing toward the bars.

“Figured I’d sneak you in a little treat,” Spidey says, whispering.

He drops it into the cage and hurries to move his hands away.

Wade sniffs again. A – treat?

[Are we being drugged? Is this the part where that Other Shoe drops?]

[[Don’t trust it! Don’t trust it!]]

[… oh shit that _smell_ tho, trust it trust it at least we’ll die happy –]

[[We never die happy! Kick it away!]]

Wade waffles in indecision, eyeing the thing that’s too close to the bars for comfort. But it smells like – Wade’s never cared for mints, especially those fucking chocolate mints because fuck no his chocolate shouldn’t taste like toothpaste, get the fuck out of here with that – but suddenly a minty cool smell has his mouth watering, his brain all soft and mushy. He fights the urge to show his belly, to roll around and rub his head on whatever the fuck that thing is, sitting stiff and uncomfortable as he Resists. He sucks as resisting things, though. Always has. Being a cat now changes nothing. Wade sniffs again, tail wagging without him even realizing it. He shuffles his paws on the ground, shuffling a little closer. Cranes his neck forward through the cone, his nose leading the way. Spider-Man sits very still on his chair, hardly breathing as the cat predator-crawls closer. If Wade was paying any attention to him, he’d have been grateful for it.

Instead, every broken instinct inside him is telling him to pounce on That Thing.

It’s a little – leaf? A – plant?

[Holy shit!]

[[It IS drugs!]]

[Holy shit!]

[[A superhero just snuck drugs into our jail cell and I’m –]]

[HoLy ShIt!]

[[Shut up White you’re being so repetitive right now, I’m trying to say –]]

[It’s catnip!]

[[YOU ASSHOLE! I WAS GOING TO SAY THAT.]]

[Catnip catnip catnip catnip catnip –]

Wade’s eyes stalk the tiny brown flowery thing, ears cocked, every fearful thought silenced by that sweet minty-breeze aroma, all at once overwhelming and maddening and calming and every good thing. In the center of the cage now, low on his belly, he pauses to rub his head against the floor, compelled to roll himself around, the cone rolling awkwardly with his face. Meowing, he rolls to a crouch and pounces the rest of the way, wrapped paws scrambling for the little plant, dangerously close to knocking it out of the cage in the process. Having caught the thing, Wade rubs his patchy, scarred head into the plant, rolling it around on himself. His chest rumbles like an engine.

Unbeknownst to Wade Wilson, Peter Parker smiles under the mask.


	2. smitten kitten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favorite comment so far comes from ItsCryTimeMyDudes: "IDK why I like this." (paraphrasing)  
> I don't know why either, my dude. Zero clue. XD
> 
> Happy Wednesday. I was gonna wait until the weekend to post but nobody cares.  
> Thanks for reading! Love you people!  
> I've made a Twitter account for the sole purpose of connecting to fanfic peeps if you wanna look me up to chat: [@Fredegund9](https://twitter.com/Fredegund9?s=09)

2\. smitten kitten

-

-

-

“Back off, would you?”

George slumps a little in relief at the demanding, firm tone, whooshing out a breath because at least now he can hand this job over and wash his hands of the whole thing, but he’s sweating under his hair and can’t exactly back off without letting Zombie Cat loose on Manhattan. And that’s somehow an actual scary concept for which he refuses to take responsibility, no way no how. If this thing gets loose it’ll be Spider-Man’s fault. It’s surprisingly easy to blame Spider-Man for things. He grunts out what he hopes is an understandable response given the situation even as he keeps wrestling with the cat, holding it back and away from his face with the giant leather gloves. The cat doesn’t seem to like him being in its space, but it also won’t let him retreat, its teeth buried in one of his gloves as he growls and thrashes his head side to side. He’s got his ears flat against his head and those creepy, slitted eyes are blown wide with apparent terror.

He’s only been trying to wrangle Zombie Cat for, like, five minutes.

It’s been a long ass five minutes.

Spider-Man crowds into his space, shoulder to shoulder with him as he presses his masked face close to the bars. “Deadpool. Deadpool, hey. You’re okay. He’s gonna get out of there as soon as you let him go you know.” The cat’s ears twitch at the name.

“Yes, please let the nice man go.” Does he sound desperate?

He’s only a little desperate.

For his part, Spider-Man sounds only a little grumpy, his voice pointed as he says, “Why didn’t you wait for me to get here?”

George swallows, wide-eyed as he wonders at the quality of these gloves. Zombie Cat’s still doing a number on the left one with its teeth, the cone clearly biting into its neck as it’s pressed into it from the force of the cat’s chomping. The cat’s apparently got claws again because they pierce through the bandages around its paws and are also buried in the gloves. But see, that’s a problem. Cats don’t grow claws like this, not after such a brutal declawing. It’d been the work of an amateur, sure, a hack job that left the cat’s whole paws mangled messes. Still, it’d been a thorough amputation. Cats don’t just _regrow_ toe bones. Further proof that there’s something not right about this cat, whose heart was not beating, not even slowly, when he’d arrived here. No matter what Angela has to say about it, George knows what he saw and knows what he’s seeing now. This cat came back from the dead and regrows bones. Not to mention it was brought in by Spider-Man, a superhero with straight-up superpowers. How many normal cats get to claim the same level of attention from a bonafide super?

“You were on the way!” George protests. His face feels hot. “I figured I’d get him ready.”

“Golly gee, he sure looks ready now.”

Isn’t the hero here supposed to be doing more… heroing? Panting from the effort to try and tear his hand out of the steel jaws of the monster Spider-Man’s apparently okay with unleashing upon the world, George huffs and says between gritted teeth, “Will you just help me get my hands outa here before they get eaten?”

“He doesn’t like gloves,” Spider-Man says, sounding very sure about that.

George isn’t nearly as sure. “Well he won’t let mine _go_ , so –”

“No, I mean he doesn’t like to be touched with them. I think they scare him.”

“I wasn’t about to put my bare hand in this cage, what are you, _nuts_ –”

George doesn’t like authority figures. He isn’t good at listening to them or regarding them as authoritative at all. When people use the Authoritative Voice, he typically reacts by doing the exact opposite of what they say, a leftover instinct from dear old dad. To be fair to this moment in time, he hasn’t ever really viewed Spider-Man as an authoritative figure. He’s not _Captain America_ , with the whole plan and the orders and the – muscley presence? Plus, Spider-Man’s been relatively friendly up until now. He saves people and keeps the city safe, doing menial little jobs the Avengers won’t touch. Apparently he even rescues gross, ugly big cats from dumpsters or something. It’s respectable, kind of. George can admit to some minor hero worship when he was younger. Not to anybody except himself, but he can at least admit it to himself. He used Spidey Soap until he was a teenager for crying out loud. This is the least serious superhero to ever have superheroed.

Still, when Spider-Man grips his shoulder and says, “Don’t move,” George’s brain flashes all the way back to dear old dad who started his angst with authority figures in the first place. Instead of doing what he prefers doing in response to an order, instead of moving just to spite whoever told him not to, George _immediately stops moving_.

Frozen in – supplication, almost fear, marveling at the change in this dude’s tone, he holds his breath as Spider-Man gets up close and personal. He presses his body into George’s so closely he can smell the super’s body wash, which – is that Spidey Soap? No way – and then he sticks his arm into the cage alongside his own. Is his suit bulletproof? Is it catproof?

Zombie Cat sees the addition of the third arm and freaks the fuck out.

Thrashes his whole body around, tiny hairs from his patchy blonde fur falling out as his jaws unhinge from George’s glove and then he’s clamping down on Spider-Man instead. George immediately yanks his arms out of the cage and throws himself backward, knocking his hip on the table behind them in his haste to get away. Spider-Man doesn’t make a single noise as Zombie Cat chomps down on him. Craning his neck to see around the lean super, George sees the pool of blood under Spider-Man’s wrist and cringes. This cat is a big fat lawsuit waiting to happen. They got him to sign those waivers, right? Better check with Angela before the hero leaves –

And no, Spider-Man’s suit is _not_ catproof.

Zombie Cat is trembling and growling, fangs clamped onto Spider-Man and refusing to budge. He’s shushing the cat, though, isn’t making any move to punch its lights out or even yell about the pain, which surely must be significant. Those newly-grown claws rake down the side of Spider-Man’s arm before he manages to _thwip_ out a web with his other hand, catching the cat around its middle again and sticking it to the floor. He webs the cat’s paws down, too, making quick work of it, shushing it all the while like it’s some cute little kitten instead of the twenty-pound burned up husk that it is. Surely Spider-Man can’t be blind under that costume? What with all the acrobatics?

“It’s okay, it’s fine,” Spider-Man is saying, all soft and whispering, hunched forward with his arms inside the cage. One’s still clamped in Zombie Cat’s jaws, those growls slowing down the more the hero talks, or maybe now that he’s effectively bound up tight in the webbing. His other hand is in the cage petting that gnarly-ass head again right between those flat, aggressive ears. The cat’s eyes are unfocused, still not fully there. It does look – scared. Spider-Man pauses to bring his hand up to his mouth and bite one finger of his suit’s glove. He yanks it off him with a jerk of his head and lets it drop before he returns his completely bare hand to the cat’s head, scratches behind its ears with his nails. The cat shudders through the webbing, _merows_ through its mouthful of flesh.

George has to lean forward to hear what the super is saying. “You’re okay, Deadpool. It’s fine. You don’t have to eat me. I promise I’m a friendly. It’s kind of in the name, you know. Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? I don’t think I ever addressed this with you, but just to be clear, I don’t normally look like this. I mean, I’ve got a very normal face under these creepy mask eyes, don’t even worry about it. I swear I’m not normally this scary. That’s it, you’re okay. I promise one of these days we won’t have to use the webs, but at least you’re a whole lot healthier than last time. And look at those claws! You’ve got claws again! Congrats, bro. I bet that’s exciting… confusing, but, you know, not the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. I think that trophy still belongs to these two murder sharks that could talk, remind me to tell you all about it one day. That’s it, you’re okay. You’re, aw, no, you don’t need to hide that pretty face –”

With a loud, shrieking meow, the cat’s finally released its bite and ducks its head.

George releases the breath he’d been holding. “Uh, Spider-Man?”

“Excuse me, we were having a _moment_ over here.”

“That’s great and all, but you did sign that waiver, right? You’re kind of – bleeding, and –”

"Last week a lava monster hurled me through two walls and broke my collarbone, this is so not a big deal –”

“Sure, sure, but the waiver –”

Spider-Man chats with the cat the entire time he’s moving it, all calm, measured tones and soft, soft whispers. He removes the cone with one hand and the cat shakes its head out, cranes its neck. Spider-Man rubs his hand down the cat’s neck, smoothing out the patches of fur there and whispering to it some more. George stays silent for a couple reasons. One, that cat’s healed enough not to need the cone anymore. Two, Spider-Man’s blank white mask eyes seem to glare at him after he removes the thing, as if daring him to say something. He probably wouldn’t win in a fight with the guy who catches school buses with his hands, so George presses his lips together, mimes zipping them shut. The cat seems more relaxed in Spider-Man’s arms now without the cone, unable to move either way.

But when he tries to stick the bound cat into the cat carrier, Zombie Cat hisses at the box and arches away from it as much as his limited movement allows, ears flat against his head and tail lashing in the air behind him. Spider-Man whispers to it again and presses the cat against his chest, cradles the thing in his arms like a little burrito baby. This is literally the weirdest day of George’s life, and his heart races the whole time Spider-Man’s filling out the waiver, wearily eyeing the cat because its face is a little too close to Spider-Man’s chest for comfort, its face pressed into that big black spider on his costume.

Should he feel guilty if this cat kills their friendly neighborhood superhero?

Is that something George wants on his conscience?

“Uh – Spider-Man?” he says. His voice cracks, how embarrassing.

Spider-Man stops just before he’s about to walk out the door to the lobby and then inevitably out of the shelter altogether, taking that cat with him. He turns his shoulders and looks behind him at George, who fiddles with the pen the super had just used and clears his throat. “You’ll be careful, right?”

“Probably not.” The voice is – maybe a little amused, maybe a little grumpy.

Hard to tell through the mask.

George tries one more time. Let it be known that George tries. “I think that cat was dead when you brought it here. There’s something _really wrong with it_. No, look. I can’t believe I’m saying this because I honestly don’t believe in all that nonsense in the first place, but there’s bad vibes coming off that cat. Like maybe it’s haunted or something? They’re – really freaking creepy, those vibes. You can’t feel it?”

“Anybody ever tell you you’re kind of an asshole, George?”

Without waiting for a response, Spider-Man turns and steps through the doors.

George yells, “Don’t come crying to me when that thing kills you!”

At least – at least Zombie Cat’s not his problem anymore.

Right?

-

-

-

As soon as Spider-Man dissolves the webs, Wade takes off running and disappears under a couch. His body is shaking, and he can’t control it, but he’s not – scared, exactly. He’s just – everything else. Maybe a little scared somewhere in the knot of other emotions. People had whispered about them on the streets as Spider-Man walked them away from the shelter, all shocked whispers that followed them until Spider-Man eventually took to the rooftops. He wrapped one arm securely around Wade, webbed his body more firmly onto his chest, and whispered to him what was about to happen, warned him it might feel weird but that it was perfectly safe, the only way home without risking his identity.

Then he shot a web at a building and –

_swung them into the fucking air_.

His claws dug clear through the webbing and into Spider-Man’s chest somewhere along the way, stomach dropping at every dip and pivot through the skies. The tiny patches of fur on his face blew so hard that some of it was swept away with the wind, but Wade was too busy to notice, his tongue flopping in the breeze as he tried to force his eyes to remain open through them watering. He’d be whooping for joy if he were human, so unexpected was the ride, so different from anything he’d experienced over the past few decades, claws clamped into the fleshy part of one of Spider-Man’s pecs as his heart races and thumps. All too soon, though, Spidey was landing on a rooftop and grabbing a hidden backpack out of an air vent, webbing Wade to the roof while he changed right in front of him.

[Me- _owwww_ , muscles.]

[[Get a look at those scratches, yeesh.]]

[How can you even _see_ the scratches with those abs in the way –]

[[WE did that. WE hurt him! He’s gonna take us ‘home’ and rip our claws out again!]]

[You think?] White’s voice is very small.

Wade’s shaking again. Spidey’s been pretty okay, actually. He’s nice. Maybe. Jury’s out. Still, he doesn’t seem like the torture-animals sort of fellow. He reminds Wade of the boy scouts, all helpful and shit. His arm’s smeared with red, those claw marks on his arms and torso stark red against his pale, pale skin. But then both the scratches and the skin and the _muscles_ disappear underneath a wrinkled green t-shirt, he’s hopping one leg at a time into tight black skinny jeans, zipping them up after he’s tucked himself in, and Wade has to remind himself that it’s rude to ogle people while they get naked in front of him. Just because he’s a cat now does not give him the right to – ooh, who’s he kidding, this whole cat thing came with such few perks, watching alarmingly attractive, strong superheroes strip down without a care in the world, all confident and cute and _oh my god Spidey’s got the cutest face_ –

He crouches down beside the webbed-up cat, smiles at him.

Wade melts.

Into goo.

Metaphorical goo, because real goo would be crazy.

But he melts, right there on the roof. His ears perk up on his head and his heart beats fast.

“See?” Spidey says. The way his lips stretch around the word, around that smile, has Wade a little dumbstruck. Who knew that under the mask there’d be this adorable little twink, eyes all warm honey-brown and crinkly around the corners, looking for all the world like he’s actually happy to be crouched here on a rooftop talking to and looking at a gnarly-ass mutant cat. He’s got wild mask-mussed dark hair that’s all smooshed against his head, pressed against his forehead. Wade wants to grow hands and tousle it.

He wants to grow hands for other reasons, too.

“Told you I’m actually not that scary-looking in real life. I only ever wear the suit when I’m swinging around the city like an idiot. You won’t have to see it too much at home.”

Anyway, he’d webbed Wade back up to his chest, this time pressed against a cotton-blend t-shirt instead of that smooth spandex, threw on a jacket and zipped it up so that only the cat’s head stuck out of it, the webs hidden from view as they took the stairs to the bottom of that building and then headed the last few blocks to Spidey’s apartment. And now that they’re officially in the building, in the apartment, shut up inside this place the wallcrawler calls _home_ , Wade feels all the feelings and all those feelings that he can’t name have him hiding and shaking under the couch. Good things don’t happen to him. Spidey feels like a good thing. Hence, it doesn’t track that any of this is real right now. Wade’s past has its claws in him, dragging him back toward a reality that doesn’t involve kindly heroes and a warm apartment where he’s free to wander, not locked up somewhere small and cramped and constraining. This present doesn’t match his past, which means that the future looms overhead like a terrifying, giant unknown.

Wade’s pretty sure he’s going to fuck this up once he ventures out from the couch.

Under the couch is safe enough. He isn’t in the way here. It’s dark.

Easy to hide how ugly he is.

But Spider-Man lays himself out on the floor beside the couch, face peering through the darkness at him. Wade hisses and bats a paw toward him, ears laid flat on his head as he shuffles back into the wall behind him, presses himself out of reach of the human.

“Welcome home,” Spidey’s saying. “We’ve only got one bedroom, but it’s a big enough bed for us both once you’re comfortable around me. Or you can sleep on the couch. Or under it. I get it, bro. You’ve picked a defensible spot. Safe. I got a litter box in the bathroom. Think you’ll let me show it to you sooner rather than later? Good roomies don’t pee on the floor, you know. I won’t if you don’t.”

Wade’s throat rumbles with a growl like an engine idling.

Spider-Man’s hair flops into his eyes as he’s angled awkwardly on the floor. He blows the little strands out of his eyes, going cross-eyed as he looks at them. He scratches his blunt human nails against the itchy grey carpet, smiling at Wade into the darkness. “Okay, okay, I’ll leave you alone. I’ll just be in the kitchen if you need me. Or if you wanna avoid me. You can reasonably scoot out from the other side of the couch and dart into the bedroom, I’ll leave the door open if you want to explore it? Okay, I’m going now. Just, make yourself at home or whatever. This is your space too, Deadpool. You’re okay here. Once you get comfortable, I’ve got stuff to show you. Cat stuff, don’t worry. I’ll have to go back out for a scratching post or something, since you’ve got those pretty claws now, but I got things you can climb and these feather toys and a thing with balls that roll around and around when you whack them.”

The idling engine’s turned off now, at least.

Still, Wade’s mouth is open as he bares his fangs, a hiss at the back of his throat.

Spidey pats the floor. “Okay, really going now. You do your thing.”

He proceeds to leave Wade alone. He actually does, too. He doesn’t try to force contact, doesn’t approach him under the couch again. Wade’s getting a little tired from being all tense and curled up in such a tight space. He listens to Spidey puttering around his kitchen, watches the man as his feet occasionally pass the couch throughout the day. Wade’s stomach starts to gurgle after a while, hunger pains hitting him. He’s used to being hungry, it shouldn’t be a problem, but a few days at the shelter seem to have spoiled him because he squirms and squirms. Spidey must have left food out because Wade can smell it, can smell something fishy and lemony and – and juicy. He _wants it_. He’s not sure the food is meant for him, but he very suddenly couldn’t care less about that.

After pissing on the floor under the couch, Wade figures it’s time to move out of that spot.

It’s time for some grub.

Shuffling toward the edge of the couch, his nose and whiskers peeking out of the darkness, Wade’s idling engine growls have started back up as he lays his ears flat against his head and eyes the living room, eyes the quiet kitchen. For only having one window, the apartment’s got enough light to make Wade feel uncomfortable and ugly. The window’s curtains are pushed aside, as much light as possible streaming through them, and there’s a bulb humming overhead in the kitchen, too, shining yellow. Spidey’s whistling an airy tune in the bedroom doing who knows what in there, so it’s probably safe to run for the food.

Wade’s eyes dart around the room, hyper focusing.

Catches on a bowl on the floor in the kitchen, the source of that smell.

Spidey’s still whistling, the sound muffled through the wall.

[GO GO GO GO GO]

With a growling _merrow_ , Wade GOES.

Paws on the carpet, he races for the bowl in the kitchen, skidding across the tiled floor as soon as he touches down on it, his body stumbling straight past the bowl as he ends up throwing himself into a cabinet, knocking into it hard enough to rattle a glass that’s on the counter directly above him. Within the span of a few frenzied seconds, the glass tumbles, hits the counter, rolls off it and breaks on Wade’s head, showering him and the floor with shards of glass and white, soured milk that reeks. Merowing, he shakes himself and runs for the bowl again, so frantic to get to it that he stuffs his face into the food and chomps down, slurping up the squishy wet cat food before it disappears on him. Dimly, he’s aware that he’s just made a mess. Not just a mess, but he’s broken something. There’s glass in his paws and blood on the tiles, and there’s no way Spidey’s gonna let this go easy. But he’s hungry, starving, _ravenous_. Healing takes a lot out of him. Starving for years takes a lot out of him. He’s still stuffing face, fishy wet food sticking to his fur and weighing down his whiskers, when Spidey races into the room.

Wade’s determined to eat as much as he can before he’s yanked away from it.

But Spidey – Spidey doesn’t do anything.

Makes no move at all to tear Wade away from the food.

Doesn’t yell.

Nothing.

Except a soft, exhaled, “Oh, Deadpool. You’ve hurt yourself, dude.”

The super twink lets him finish his food, just stands there watching, his feet and legs the only part of him Wade can see from where he’s still slurping up chunks of smelly fish-substitute. It can’t be real fish, he’s not sure this is real food at all, definitely not high-quality tacos with an avocado dip on the side. God, he misses human food. Cat food sucks. Human food that’s not leftover pieces in dumpsters, either, but the good stuff. Hot and fresh and flavorful. Screw it, he’d even welcome something lame like a peanut butter sandwich. Pretzels. Pineapple olive pizza on burnt crust.

But this is – this shit’s fine. It must be, because before he knows it he’s licking the bowl clean, straight-up licking until nothing at all remains, not even a drop of the juices. Nothing. When it’s gone, he stares down at the bowl in what feels like despair, can see the vague reflection of his face in the bottom of it. Spidey’s feet shuffle toward him out of the corner of his eye and Wade jumps out of his skin at the tiny action, leaping away from the bowl and straight on top of more glass that slides through his paws and into his rump like a knife through warm butter. Pain is no big thing, he can barely feel it through his terror, but Spidey yells out a warning even as webs thwip into the wreckage in the kitchen, latch onto Wade’s middle and pulling him into the air, straight toward Spidey’s outstretched arms.

Wade yells out a piercing _merowwww!_ the whole way there.

Spidey’s eyes are wide, his whole body braced for impact.

He gets in a few good scratches before Spidey manages to wrangle more webbing around him, restraining his legs tight to his body. He’s hissing and wriggling but can’t do much else, Spidey with his arms wrapped around his bleeding burrito-webbed bundle. He murmurs words Wade can’t hear through the panic the whole way to another room, the door next to that bedroom, a bright white room that’s tiny and cramped with chipped tiles on the wall and a big, flat mirror above a round yellow sink. Spidey sets him into the empty sink and bends over to fish through the cabinet underneath it, rummaging around clinking bottles and boxes and whatever else is down there. Wade stares at himself in that giant ass mirror and kind of wants to die.

He looks so… _pathetic_.

_Pitiful_.

If he’d ever come across a cat as gnarly as this one as a human, he’d have shot the thing square between its eyes, put it out of its misery. His ears are flat against his head but one of them has a permanent bite taken out of it, lays lopsided and wonky. Tufts of fluff grow up crooked, patchy between all the scarring and pockmarks and ridges. His eyes are beady and yellowed like he’s dying of cirrhosis of the liver, wide like he’s Seen Some Shit. This is not a cat you take home as a pet.

Spidey’s still talking when he stands up holding a first aid kit.

“It’s not the best sign when you spend your first day here bleeding,” Spidey says.

Wade hisses at him as his hands come within touching distance. Spidey backs off. He waits until the hisses die down and very slowly lowers his hands, edging them closer and closer by inches. It takes a while, but the fight’s seeping out of Wade the longer he lays in a cold sink with his limbs all trapped and a full belly. He’s – tired. Tired again. And Spidey is pretty like this, in the harsh glow of the overhead light, with his face and eyes all soft and warm, his lips wrapping around his quiet words like little kisses. So when Spidey’s fingertips finally make contact with the scars between Wade’s ears, he _merows_ through a closed jaw, eyes half-lidded, lets the human do what he will. Spidey talks to him as he cuts a little slit through the webbing on his rump, close to his tail, continues talking as tweezers enter the scene. Wade squirms, eyeing the thing, but Spidey’s quick and efficient like he’s well practiced fishing shards of glass out of flesh. It’s not the best feeling in the world when those shards of glass pull from his skin, pricks of white hot pain that burn and itch. Spidey has to wriggle some of the glass bits because the healing factor’s already tried closing around them, but he’s fast about it, talking as a clear attempt at distraction.

When those tweezers pull one of the smaller ones out, Spidey eyes Wade’s rump intently.

[Take me out to dinner first, oh em gee.]

Wade’s tail is webbed underneath him or he’d be thumping it against the sink.

“Wow,” Spider-Man breathes out, wide-eyed. “You really do heal, huh?”

[[No way, we do?!]]

[This is bad. This is real bad. Abort mission, may day may day, ABORT.]

[[Lab rat here we come…]]

But Spider-Man isn’t instantly insidious as a result of seeing the healing firsthand. No, his face stays soft and open, curious but cautious as he continues plucking shards of glass from Wade’s bottom, watching as each gap in the skin seals behind each glass piece leaving only a smear of dark brown where the blood dries. Spidey takes his time removing the glass, quieter now that there’s something to think about, no doubt. Or maybe he no longer sees the point in talking to what amounts to a mutated freak of nature. Either way, Wade kind of misses that rich baritone, kind of misses the way it drones on in the background. Once the glass is out of his bottom, the man moves on to his paws, freeing one at a time and holding it firmly in one hand while he works.

[Aw, we’re holding hands!]

[[Look at us go, putting the moves on a hero when we don’t even have opposable thumbs.]]

[Aiming awfully high, we are.]

[[What’s that saying? Shoot for the sun, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.]]

[Pretty sure we’d burn right up if we shot for the sun.]

[[Well it’s a good thing we’re missing then.]]

[Swing and a miss!]

Spidey’s a decent fellow, Wade decides once he’s deposited onto the man’s bed right at the head of it beside the mass of pillows. The sheets are cold and smooth and feel good even through the gobs of webbing keeping him restrained. He’s able to rest his chin on one of the pillows, eyes tracking Spidey as he leaves the bedroom, ears perked as he listens. Glass scrapes against tiles as it’s swept up. It’s weird to feel almost cozy here. Being restrained isn’t usually as well received as it has been with this gunk; despite the fact that it pulls on his patches of fur, that it’s itchy, it’s warm and tight almost like a hug. Being unable to move lets his brain focus on other things, like how this whole entire bedroom reeks of Spidey, all soft lavenders and rich cedar, a hint of crisp flowery body wash embedded in the sheets. There’s a window in here, too, bright warm sunlight streaming in through the parted curtains. Wade can still hear Spidey in the other room cleaning up his mess, so he relaxes a bit, lets himself take the whole room in as his senses filter through everything. A basket of dirty laundry beside a closed accordion door, full to the brim but not overflowing. Various metal bits and wires and computer parts lining every available surface from the dresser top to the nightstand Wade’s facing. There’s pictures on the walls, a couple that are clearly personal, an unmasked Spidey with a beautiful redheaded girl, some with only them and some featuring another boy with a lopsided grin. A corkboard hangs above the dresser with lots of pictures scattered and pinned up, snapshots of what looks like a full, thriving life. Lopsided-grin boy plays a predominate role in many of them. An arm thrown over Spidey’s shoulders in graduation gowns. One with the redhead and a bigger boy in an unfamiliar kitchen. The bigger boy’s wearing an apron that reads ‘I make horrible science puns but only periodically’ and the girl’s leaning against a countertop, glancing at the camera with a raised eyebrow behind an old magazine.

Wade feels pathetic looking at them.

[You think they’re all cousins? Siblings?]

[[… friends? Do normal people have that many friends?]]

[They all look close. Spidey’s got a family.]

[[Friends.]]

[Look at those pics, bro. Even if they’re friends, they’re family.]

[[… yeah.]]

Yellow’s sigh is long and drawn out and depressing as fuck. What’s Spidey trying to prove, anyway, hanging up all these cute pics of moments between people who look like they enjoy each other? Who bothers to print real pictures these days?

[Assholes who’ve got friends, that’s who.]

By the time Spider-Man returns to the bedroom, Wade’s worked himself into quite the little bad brain day surrounded by all this happy shit with him as the fugly interloper who does not belong. Spider-Man seems all carefree and happy, though, humming a jaunty little ditty as he sits on the edge of the bed and looks down at Wade, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed. His lips quirked up in the corners, Spidey holds a hand out in front of him and waggles his fingers in the air. “Think you’ll let me pet you, Deadpool?”

His warning growls actually work on this human, wonder of wonders.

Spidey backs off, holds his hand up. “Solid no. I respect that. Still, you’re gonna come to like it here. I’ve been trying to get back at my landlord for hiking up the rent, but like, in a way that won’t come back to bite me in the long run. I’m going for mild annoyance? So anyway, on a deep dive down a google rabbit hole for cat care the other day, I discovered there’s this whole community of cat people who build legit obstacle courses for their cats all over their houses. I figured I’d work on some blueprints today, see if you’ve got a pointer or two for me. I’ve already learned you’re gonna need a bunch of hidey holes, spaces only you can fit inside. Am I on the right track so far?”

[Oh fuck me.]

[[Yes please, please yes!]]

[Oh _fuck me_.]

[[This guy’s officially too good to be true.]]

[I’m a smitten kitten. All aflutter. Twitterpated.]

[[Don’t swoon too soon. Nobody’s this good.]]

Spidey dissolves the webbing soon after rambling out more grade A plans for what sounds like a bonafide cat utopia, making no move toward Wade when the cat immediately throws himself off the bed and beats a hasty retreat for the living room. He runs the length of the kitchen and living room in wide frantic circles before his brain lands on the couch, and then he’s darting back under it and pressing himself up against the wall behind it, stuffing himself into the tight cramped little nook and listening to see if Spidey followed him. Spidey’s still on the bed, though, probably. He isn’t making any noise except the occasional hum. There’s still a wet patch where he peed under the couch earlier, but he’s well accustomed by now to being surrounded by perpetual piss stench. It’s almost the only thing he recognizes in this bright, homey apartment with its hero for an owner who hums a lot and talks to cats.

Wade sits in his own piss.

[[Right where we belong.]]

White’s still sighing like a lovestruck idiot, all hearts eyes.

And so goes day one in the Spider-Man household.


	3. back up

3\. back up

-

-

-

As days turn into weeks, Deadpool marvels at the fact that Peter’s still letting him stay.

(Woo boy, what a pretty name this boy’s got. Pretty Petey pumpkin eater.)

After… everything.

There’s been a lot of everythings.

He can’t seem to control himself. Has he always been this… crazy? Even when he _wants_ to be a good cat, Wade sucks at it, his emotions too unmanageable and chaotic and frenzied. He’s out of his mind with panic most days, too anxious to be in the same room with Spidey but also he feels touch starved but also scared but also he craves it and _hates_ it and – it’s too much to handle, this warm homey little apartment that his mangy gross cat-self has been welcomed into without reservation, without any restrictions at all. Spidey leaves all the doors open for him all the time. Even when he’s taking a shower, he keeps the bathroom door cracked. Presumably it’s because Peter’s hoping his cat will decide to use the litterbox. Wade, however, uses it to watch Spidey’s well-shaped silhouette on the other side of the translucent curtain, unabashed for the most part. When Spidey jerks off in the shower there’s always that brief flicker of guilt for staying for the show when Spidey hasn’t consented to being watched, but it quickly fades in the face of his infinite reality. He’s a cat, presumably forever since he can’t die and isn’t aging. What harm could it really do? To eek out even the smallest perk of this gig?

People jerk off in front of their cats all the time. Nobody cares.

So he shits in the kitchen and then he watches Pete shower, slinks through the door to the warm room full of steam. The sound of the water as it rains down on the tiles is oddly calming, lets his perpetually racing heart take a break for once. He curls up near the sink with his head resting on his front paws, soaking up the warmth of the steam and the way the air smells damp, soaking up how the running water is loud enough to quiet the boxes, loud enough to drown out the chaos in his head for a spell. Soaking up the sight of _Peter_ , who’s lean and firm and plump in all the right spots. Wade can’t get enough of dat ass, could watch it in a daze forever. And those thighs, oh my God those _thighs_. He wants to lick the water off them. Is that creepy? Hell yes. Does Wade care?

Hell no.

But Peter somehow tolerates him. Somehow.

“You must like the sound of running water,” Peter says one morning, his head poking out of the curtain. His hair is wet and slicked back, drops of water trailing down his face, all smiles as he stares down at Wade. He’s pulled the curtain aside just enough to speak through it. Wade wishes he’d pull it all the way back, reveal that firm, chiseled chest, show off his package (Wade’s seen him in his birthday suit for small, short but sweet intervals when he’s stepping out of the shower to wrap a towel around his waist or when he drops that towel to the floor in the bedroom to shimmy into clothes, but it’s never enough, never more than a few seconds here, a minute or two there). “This is the only time you ever just chill with me in the room. You know, you can be in the same room as me when I’m _not_ naked in a shower, right?”

[And miss this view?]

Outwardly, Wade fails to react. Inwardly, he’s thinking _, I want to be near you all the time, but my body freaks out, it doesn’t know how, I don’t know how to be normal_.

The boxes both agree.

It’s true, too. As soon as Spidey presses one foot on the tiled floor outside the tub, Wade gives himself a second to admire the view before he’s darting out of the bathroom and running in a wide panicked circle around the living room. His claws are out and he keeps getting stuck in the carpet, yanking out fibers of it here and there as he runs. Spidey steps out of the bathroom then and Wade about jumps out of his skin, lets out warning growls as he darts under the couch into his usual spot, pressing himself into the wall there.

While Spidey’s in the bedroom changing for work, Wade slinks out from under the couch.

Runs another lap around the room.

Darts for the food bowl.

Laps up some water.

Runs some more.

Honestly, Wade’s not sure why he’s running. There’s this manic energy eating him up inside, a build up of the boxes spewing nonsense and shitty memories, and he’s been chained up too long, too long, too long. So now he runs. He doesn’t even want to escape this place, doesn’t ever want to step foot outside Peter’s apartment again. Still, his body tells him to run, so when Peter’s here, Wade’s usually running in circles like a crazy person. Cat. Like a crazy cat. He’s already clawed Peter’s curtains to ribbons and he’s chewed gouges into the couch cushions. There used to be a coffee table, but Peter threw it out after Wade gnawed one of the legs down to splinters while he was at work one day. Came home to find Wade flattened under the weight of the coffee table, a leg bent awkwardly, meowing long, tiny distress calls. Wade hurts himself on a regular basis without trying, but that time had probably been one of the worst, his whole stomach caved in under that heavy wood.

“Deadpool!” Peter had said, his voice all frantic and panicked.

Wade might have died on a sigh as Peter picked the coffee table up off him.

Because when he came to, his head was in Peter’s lap, body splayed out on the couch. A hand was petting long and slow strokes down his back. He’d let himself enjoy the rub down while his senses returned, his mind all foggy from the death and the hellfire and the torture. Peter’s leg seeped warmth into Wade through the man’s jeans. He’d meowed, rubbed his head on Peter’s thigh, tired and achy, kneading his paws into Peter’s flesh with some strange instinctual urge to burrow himself closer. He’d broken the man’s coffee table intentionally, gnawing on that wood over a period of _hours_ while Peter was gone, chipped a tooth on it. Still Peter held him. Petted him. Was talking to him as he woke up.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Peter said as soon as he felt Wade move.

Wade _merowed_ , rubbing his head against the jean-clad thigh some more.

“Do you only have nine lives?” Peter asked him as he ran a firm hand over Wade’s back, taking full advantage of Wade’s grogginess. This was the closest he’d been allowed to get to the jumpy feline without the use of his webs. His voice was shaky above him, trying for stern but landing a few inches closer to scared. “Because you’ve gotta stop wasting them, Deadpool. I mean it. I didn’t know if you were gone for good this time, if I was cuddling a corpse, and I can’t – it’s not just you anymore, okay? I’m in it with you now, so you’ve got to stop dying. Tear the curtains up, pee all over the floor, run around in your crazy circles, it’s whatever. You’ve got trauma and you get to let that out however it needs to be let out… but you can’t die anymore. You’re gonna give me a heart condition at this rate. I’m gonna worry about you every time I go to work now, it’s not funny.”

_It’s not just you anymore, okay?_

_I’m in it with you now._

Wade’s not sure he knows how to handle those words or the sentiment behind them. Even now days later, those words come back to haunt him at random intervals throughout the day, Peter’s voice all shaky and earnest and _real_. Despite the fact that he’s already renting out headspace to two intrusive voices that aren’t his own, Wade finds that he doesn’t mind it when Peter’s voice joins the fray. White and Yellow could be saying some truly horrible shit, but then there’s that tiny voice squeezing in between them, wriggling to make room for itself. _Peter’s_ voice, calling him a pretty kitty from six feet away. Asking, always asking if he can get closer. Never doing it because Wade never grants permission. He’d even run away that day he’d died, after he’d woken up properly and dusted off those last few dregs of his death nap. He can’t seem to stop running away from Peter, even when the human keeps sticking around, talking to him, building things in the walls for him.

It’s badass, the jungle gym he’s built for Wade.

Not that Wade’s ever brave enough to use it when Peter’s around.

But when he’s at work? Fair game.

He’s nailed boards into the walls, some high, some low, some slanted like a slide. It’s ugly as fuck, but the boards come out from the wall with just enough room for Wade to climb them and jump from them and perform cat acrobatics, leaping from one end of a board to another that’s three feet higher on the wall. It reminds Wade of his Deadpool days spent parkouring across rooftops, back when he was strong and human and free. Pete’s even carved out a few spots that go into the walls, so Wade can enter the wall at one end and hang out inside it, exit out through another end. He can pass through the wall from the living room and end up in the bedroom right beside the dresser, at a spot where Peter’s placed a fluffy brown cat bed that Wade never uses when he’s around. But when Peter’s gone, Wade walks circles inside the bed, kneads his paws against it, curls up and settles in. He can’t decide if he prefers Peter’s giant human bed because it smells like him or if he likes the cat bed better because the human bought it for him. People don’t buy Wade things. Not ever until Peter showed up, and now he can’t seem to get the human to _stop_. Seriously, he won’t stop bringing cat shit home. Big things like scratching posts or more boards for the jungle gym, or little things like catnip or that chewable little sushi toy that squeaks when Wade hits it. Even when he’s out with his friends, he comes home with another little toy or a bag of treats ( _these are supposed to taste like pizza, but I tried one on the way home and trust me, pizza this is not…_ ).

Today is a hang-with-friends day. Spidey keeps himself busy, isn’t home much besides a few hours in the evenings after his day job and then a few hours when he’s sleeping after his night job. For someone who’s found himself in the position to lounge about the house all day doing nothing, Spidey’s schedule exhausts Wade. He’s literally exhausted by proxy and takes naps in Spidey’s honor. He’ll stay home with Wade longer on the weekends, but he disappears a few hours here and there, claiming he’s heading out to hang with friends, none of whom Wade has ever met. Not that he blames Pete for delaying the introductions; he’d be embarrassed to introduce anyone to himself, too.

But that all changes now.

Wade’s decided. Today is The Day.

When Peter comes home, Wade’s going to act normal. He’s determined. He’s going to sit still on the couch and let Peter sit beside him. He’s going to enjoy a rub down from said human who somehow wants to rub him down, and his brain’s going to deal.

No more running.

He’s a grown ass cat. It’s high time he embrace the change, okay? Peter’s _great_. Even the boxes say so! When are they ever in agreement about _anything_? But they all agree on this. Peter’s not just posturing when he shimmies into the cute little spandex getup. He’s a real, legit superhero, no gimmicks, no frills. He _saves_ people. Wade’s watched him saving people on TV, can work a remote by pawing at it to flip the thing on and flip through the channels until he finds the news. Spidey’s out there working it every night, swinging on webs through the cityscape, foiling evil schemes. Three nights ago, a little old granny was interviewed claiming that Spider-Man helped get her home after she’d forgotten where she was. Shit, Spidey rescued _him_ and brought him _home_.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this isn’t some plot.

Spidey’s like that evil robot thing from that one Iron Man movie.

 _There ain’t no strings on me_.

Zero. Nada. No-strings-attached-goodness, that’s what this boy is. If Peter wanted Wade to stick around for some dubious reason, he’d have shown his hand by now. It’s been like _forever_. The only thing holding Wade back from thoroughly enjoying the high life this superhero has laid out for him on a silver platter is, well, _himself_.

Wade is sick to the teeth of getting in his own way.

How dumb is that? Why is he being _so dumb_?

[I mean, being dumb is on brand for us.]

[[It’d be weirder if we were acting smart, tbh.]]

He runs circles around the room until his heart’s racing, runs the obstacle course by leaping and jumping from board to board until he springs off the end of one and plants himself on the counter in the kitchen. Then he leaps down to the water bowl on the floor and laps it up, gets himself nice and hydrated. He even uses the litter box this time, which feels grainy and coarse under his paws and smells like ammonia, but it’s kind of fun burying his turds like they’re little pirate treasures. Enjoy crossing the seven seas to find _that_ , bitches.

Then he returns to the living room and curls into a ball on the couch.

He lays his head on his front paws and stares at the door.

He’s Doing This.

[[What if he doesn’t come home today?]]

Then he’ll do this tomorrow, geez. Also, he always comes home. Peter’s great, remember?

[[Okay but WHAT IF he comes home today and decides he hates you.]]

[You did shit in his sneakers yesterday. He’s probably still pissed about it.]

[[He literally stepped into it, brah.]]

[That was gnarly.]

[[WE’RE gnarly. This is a bad idea. Get back under the couch where you belong –]]

White and Yellow won’t stop feeding off each other’s assholery. Wade rubs his paws against his lopsided ear and then whacks himself in the head a few times, but their disaster scenarios grow more outlandish and ridiculous as time passes, until they’re so loud in his head and he feels like he’s about to leap out of his skin and he can’t hear the keys rustling in the hallway, can’t hear the door opening, can’t hear Peter setting a bunch of bags down on the counter in the kitchen, toeing off his shoes before he steps socked feet on the carpet. Wade’s face is buried in the couch cushions and he’s merowing out a growling tune to try and block out the voices, claws out as he digs them into the seat under him and holds on for dear life.

When Peter’s voice cuts through the noise in his head, Wade does indeed jump out of his skin.

Hissing, he jumps up, would have leapt straight off the couch except his claws are holding him in place. Wild, wide eyes meet Spidey’s from where the man is standing beside the couch, palms up in front of him as he stands very still. “I’m home,” he says, quiet and relaxed. “Are you okay? You’re shaking.”

Is he? Wade hadn’t noticed until the moment it’s pointed out, but… yeah. Yes, he is.

Peter tilts his head at him, keeps his hands open palms out in front of him. He takes a shuffling step closer to where Wade’s crouching. “Think you’ll let me pet you today, Deadpool?”

He asks every day.

Wade wants to say yes. It’d feel good, Peter’s warm hand on him.

He ducks his head, ears perked up. Lets out a small, tinny meow.

“Yeah?” Peter sounds surprised, voice open and pleased. He shuffles a little closer, very gingerly sits himself on the cushion beside where Wade’s shaking with his knobby shoulders up and his claws anxiously kneading holes into the seat. The plucky sound of the fabric tearing eases some of the anxiety, the rhythmic motion and feel of it under his claws helps to ground him. Wade is grinding his claws into the white fuzz inside the cushion when Peter’s fingertips ghost over the tufts of patchy fluff in between his ears. Wade freezes up, holds his breath.

“You’re okay,” Peter murmurs.

[[You are _not_ okay.]]

[We’re doing it! We’re doing it! Pete’s petting us!]

[[He’s not petting _you_ , dipshit. You’re intangible.]]

[I don’t know what that means but screw you and stop distracting me from the pets!]

More solid now, his hand rubs down Wade’s neck, over his back, soothing warmth that seeps into his bones. Wade almost instantly melts into the couch, every muscle untensing as he rolls to show his belly, rubs his head against Peter’s thigh. This is amazing, this is – why the _hell_ has he waited so long to get this thigh so close to his face, to feel that deft hand gliding over his scars like it belongs there? Above him, Peter laughs, but it’s not the mocking laugh of a scientist but the delighted laugh of a happy pet owner. He’s – he’s not in a lab. He’s in a home, with a man who touches him with his bare hands. White and Yellow won’t stop arguing, but their grating voices fade into the background as a deep, rumbling purr nearly chokes him, throat vibrating on the unfamiliar. He rubs his face into Peter’s leg, one of his own hind legs kicking when Peter rubs his tummy, tail beating out an excited rhythm on the couch as it thumps up and down.

Through half-lidded eyes, he stares up at Peter’s upside-down face above him.

Spidey always looks happy, always smiling or humming or cracking jokes, but this is – softer, the laugh lines around his eyes smoothed out, smile open and real and earnest as he scratches his human nails over Wade’s stomach and croons at him. Fluffy brown curls frame his face from this angle, the constant bedhead leaving little to the imagination. He wants to do that all the time, Wade thinks. Wants to be the reason this kid’s smiling more often. He wants these Spidey smiles to be because of _him_ , feels a sudden spike of fierce possessiveness, to keep them and claim them and collect them into his shoddy, holey memory forever. The future scares the shit out of him when those pesky intrusive thoughts come a-calling, but he’s suddenly determined to hold onto this memory, to hold onto Peter’s wide, wondering smile for as long as his swiss cheese brain lets him.

Peter relaxes into the couch. They both do.

He switches the tv on, finds a random sitcom with a laugh track. Wade flops across Peter’s knees.

Peter scratches behind his ears, switches from rubbing to scratching then back to rubbing.

“Thanks, Deadpool,” Peter says much later, when they’re still cuddling but the sun’s gone down outside the open window, cool quiet darkness creeping into the warm room. He’s switched on the lamp beside them and is laying with his head propped up on the armrest, ankles crossed on the other side. Wade’s curled up on the man’s firm, warm chest, dozed off to Peter’s heartbeat under his ear a few times. He hears those words through the vibration of his chest, though, and perks up an ear, cracks open one of his yellowed eyes.

“It’s been a long week.” Peter’s sigh is long. His chest rises and falls under Wade.

Wade butts his head under Peter’s chin, merowing at him.

[Tell Daddy Deadpool all about it, bub.]

[[Gross.]]

[… you feel just, like, zero joy in life, huh? Who hurt you?]

[[Everybody. Literally everybody.]]

[Except for Spidey!] White sounds immediately smug.

[[… whatever. He will too, just you wait.]]

“It’s just – Spider-Man stuff,” Peter says. One of his hands is resting on Wade’s back, and he pets him a few times in the silence. “Don’t get me wrong, I like being Spider-Man. It’s pretty crazy sometimes, but it’s always worth it. Plus, nothing beats flying through the city. Those views, right? But… I feel like I get shafted sometimes? None of the other heroes around town come help when there’s sewer monsters that need slaying, do they? You know, I asked for backup a couple days ago. Actually asked for once! I never ask, but I did this time… Trying to take out this gross blubbery monster that came up from a sewage pipe, but honestly my powers aren’t as effective as, say, repulser blasts would have been against those things. Pretty sure if Iron Man had been on the job, those things would have been exploded into goo in seconds, but no, I’m apparently the only super around who’s lame enough to get stuck with poo monsters. Webs don’t stick to the things, either, so I was chasing it across the whole city trying to figure out how to kill it. Hours, dude. _Hours_ fighting something that Iron Man could have taken out with one hand.”

So _that’s_ why Peter came home that night smelling like ass.

He kneads his paws into Peter’s chest, meowing at him.

Peter shakes his head, huffing out a laugh that sounds too bitter. “It’d just be nice not to be the only super around who’s willing to take on the dirty jobs. I mean, I don’t want to do it either, do I? But if I don’t, nobody will. I’m convinced. If I didn’t fight the giant towering, mutated sewage monster, the other avengers would have let it eat Manhattan. We’d have all been swimming in poo if it’d been up to them.”

He shakes his head again, scratches under Wade’s chin. “Anyway, I’m just – grateful you’re here. That’s all. This is nice. You’re being so brave.”

It’s clear that Peter’s attention is returning to the bright flickering lights of the television, eyes and focus turned back toward it. His hand is still resting on Wade’s back, though, and he’ll scritch scratch a trail of warmth over his flank every now and again, yawning. They cuddle in silence for a long time, then, but Wade’s brain can’t stop thinking about what Peter said. If he were really Deadpool, he could have helped. Let’s face it, Deadpool’s no stranger to taking on dirty jobs. He can picture it so clearly, too. He and Spidey teaming up. Going on patrols with him, parkouring across rooftops to keep up with the webslinger. He’d be the Bonnie to Pete’s Clyde, the Robin to his Batman. The jelly to his peanut butter. Grenades. Grenades could be a solution to Pete’s sewer monster problem.

If it’s explosives he needs, then Deadpool would have been a bang-up choice.

Would have, could have.

Fact is, he’s not Deadpool anymore. He’s a cat. Any use he could have served to the hero is stuck in the past, and even then, a real hero like Spidey wouldn’t have wanted or accepted help from a mercenary for hire. It’s pointless to think about.

And yet.

And yet.

Wade can’t seem to stop thinking about it.

-

-

-

After that night, things feel more settled between them.

Wade isn’t as skittish, isn’t as shy. He feels more at home in Peter’s presence, like nothing bad can happen there. He still runs frantic laps around the living room, sometimes, but after the laps he’ll hurl his body in Peter’s direction, equally as frantic for cuddles and scratches and warmth that’s real. Peter’s gotten good at catching him from all angles, seems to have a sixth sense that helps him track Wade’s leaps toward him. Wade will climb the boards in the wall until he’s on top of Peter, then leap for his head when he’s not looking. Peter scoots out of the way and catches him around his middle, rubs his cheek into Wade’s stomach laughing.

“You’ll keep me on my toes,” he says.

He comes home once or twice a week smelling like the backend of a rhino, hair matted and sludgy. Wade watches the news coverage sometimes when he’s out, watches for those sewage monsters that seem to be multiplying by the day. News anchors don’t know what to make of them. They don’t know what to make of Spider-Man, either, who always seems to be taking his sweet time in defeating them. Wade practically vibrates in rage to listen to them, sometimes, when they’re highlighting why Spider-Man isn’t as effective with them, highlighting all his weaknesses for the world to see and judge and take note of. It’s clear that there’s somebody behind the creatures, somebody who’s targeting Spidey, targeting his weaknesses. Spidey’s a tough nut to be sure, but he’s right, these monsters are too slimy for him.

Months into the issue, now, and Wade’s about Had It.

He’s up to his eyeballs in repressed rage.

Where are the avengers? Why haven’t they brought back up?

Today, Peter’s out fighting another sludge beast, Wade watching helplessly on their couch with his tail lashing out behind him. They’ve taken to appearing in the day time, now, and it’s eating into Peter’s work hours. He’s called out sick more recently than he ever has before, and the loss in income is starting to hurt.

The beast’s neck rolls as what amounts to its face glances up at Peter sailing overhead. He sticks himself to the adjacent building, sweating through his suit. This thing shouldn't be a big deal, but he can't get a good hold on its slippery, slimy body. Brute force bounces off its fat, and his webs won't hold. The only thing that's worked so far is using the terrain. He spends an unreasonable amount of time luring the blobs into the lake where they sink or on roofs where he can get them to fall and splat. Daredevil’s helped a few times, a virtual unknown in the light of day, but he doesn’t exactly have the fire to back up his name, does he? They just aren’t the best supers to be dealing with this mess. Peter’s mature enough to admit when someone else would be better for the job, and he’s admitted it. He’s asked for help! The fact that the avengers haven’t provided said help makes Wade itch to climb out of their window, traverse the cityscape, find Iron Dick, and scratch that goatee straight off his smug superior rich-boy face.

Peter’s been up there on the wall too long, no doubt trying to map out a strategy.

A half-eaten parking meter comes careening toward Peter’s face.

Spider-Man throws himself off the wall just in time for it to strike the bricks he’d been sticking to and send chunks of those bricks raining on the ground below. Luckily he’s been at this a while now and most of the bystanders have been scared off. What few remain are those pesky reporters who probably hope he dies, and they’re standing a respectable distance away from the towering, looming blob monster with their cameras and their microphones and their annoying lack of empathy. He’d almost gotten flattened by one of these things a few weeks ago. Almost all the news stations had been damn near _disappointed_ when he crawled his way out of the rubble, all clamoring for his dramatic televised demise. It’s apparently great for ratings when superheroes crash and burn live.

It’s much worse for ratings after the fact, when there aren’t anymore giant fights left to cover.

Or when blob monsters run amuck and destroy the city.

Because, you know, the hero’s _dead_.

But whatever. Spider-Man breathes out a slow exhale and charges back at the wall of blubber, throwing his whole body into it. It sucks him up like a slimy, squeezing vacuum for a few hot seconds – horrific, _smelly_ hot seconds – until those seconds pass and he’s spat back out of the fat, bouncing off it as he tries not to gag from being covered by ooze. He sends out a line of webbing and catches himself, swinging back up and then into the blob again. Each time they bounce off each other, the blob stumbles backward a few feet, warbling in its nonsensical, fishy tongue. At this rate, it’ll only take, oh, _twelve thousand more hits_ against the thing to get it close enough to the lake to knock it into the water and make it sink. But none of these buildings are tall enough for a fatal splat and the lake’s the closest way to kill it, so.

It’s going to be a long, _long_ day.

Wade can’t do it anymore.

White and Yellow can’t either.

They’ve lived with Spidey for – for months, now. For months and months. Who even knows how long it’s been. His concept of time is bad anyway, but now that it’s filled up by a cute boy who cuddles him, he’s lucky even to notice when it’s daylight or dark. On normal days, Pete comes home, and they cuddle for _hours_ , contact that’s not painful, contact that never hurts. Peter talks to him. Wade talks back in purrs and meows, in soft head butts, in the way he’ll roll and show his tummy, batting at Pete with his paws. He follows Peter around the apartment, into his bedroom, onto his bed. He’s even sleeping in the bed with Peter now, curls up beside the human’s warmth and listens to his breaths even out, listens to him at rest. He still watches him shower, but he also uses the litterbox sometimes, uses it because it makes Pete smile, all proud and shit. He ain’t a saint, though, and still pees under the couch. But he figures with Spidey dealing with all the sewage beasts lately, he shouldn’t have to come home and clean up poo. He’ll bury it like treasure and that’s fun enough, anyway.

But it’s been months and months, maybe years, maybe _forever_.

And Wade can’t sit at home useless for another second.

Peter leaves the window cracked when he’s gone, leaves it open for Wade to get some fresh air. He’s bound to have noticed by now the way that Wade will sit under the window or stand on his hind legs and press his face into the screen, breathing in the city congestion. There isn’t a fire escape, and they’re four stories off the ground, but Wade’s walked off worse injuries before and he’ll do it again. Spidey’s across town, now, getting thrown into buildings as he tries to corral that blobby beast into the lake. Wade leaps off the couch and beelines it for the window. He stands up on his hind legs to reach it, using his claws to scratch through the screen. Struggling to heave his body up through the crack, he finally manages to shimmy his big fat body through the broken screen, screeching as he falls four stories into the alleyway below. His body splats onto warm pavement with a sickening crunch, bones breaking, ribs cracking and piercing through those all-too-vital organs they’re meant to protect.

He figured he’d die in the fall.

His last thought before he does is some twisted sense of relief, all mixed into determination.

One way or another, Spidey’s due for some back up.

And Deadpool plans to deliver.


	4. fire in the hole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had to adjust the chapter count, but I do promise that the end is in sight...  
> Thank you for reading, whether you're a silent reader or whether you've given kudos or comments. Love you all to bits. I'm sincerely hoping that switching up this story doesn't disappoint too much. This chapter is a little different than the ones that precede it.

4\. fire in the hole

-

-

-

Peter’s on his way to work when his neck tingles.

He almost ignores it because, well, work. He’s half normal, after all, has a normal job that requires his normal presence on occasion. And by ‘on occasion’ he means every Monday through Friday from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., which is as normal as anybody gets.

But then the ground gives a little shake. He hears a muffled scream in the distance.

Peter sighs. All the other normal people around him keep walking to their normal jobs.

He calls in, faking a cough. His boss tells him to feel better, but there’s an obvious undercurrent to his tone. Feel better because you’re losing me money, feel better because if you don’t, I’ll put in for a replacement, feel better because you’ve missed work a lot lately and that isn’t like you, there’s gotta be something bigger than a cough keeping you down –

Boss man isn’t wrong. It’s definitely bigger than a cough.

This one towers over a bank in downtown Manhattan, gargling water as it soaks through the walls, seemingly going after the money inside with its floppy, murky arms. Spider-Man swings overhead and perches himself on the adjacent rooftop to watch it work, wondering at the switch in motives here.

“Hard to make ends meet as a poop monster?” Peter calls down to it.

It ignores him.

Rude.

These things usually go for the destruction, not the payout. Whatever. Either way, it’s cutting into his normal-person hours, and that’s got to stop. He swings down to the street and propels himself into the blob’s back, holding his breath as he’s briefly consumed by it before the thing stretches around him and expels him, sends him careening into a wall. He catches himself on it with sticky hands, gagging through the mask, pausing to catch his breath. Boy do these things sure _stink_. They’re murky for a reason, made up of rank sewer water and swirling pieces of feces and used, soggy toilet paper.

This particular blob returns to trying to gain access to the bank.

It blubbers and warbles as it shoves its flailing arms into the bank’s windows.

Back turned to Spider-Man.

This is – unusual.

Still, it’s got to go. He takes a deep breath and plunges into the thing’s back again. There’s been some success in pushing and pulling them until they fall into the lake, at which point they either sink and drown or get absorbed into the water, which – not so great for the water quality, but it’s New York. This isn’t exactly top tier mountain stream water quality in the first place, and it’s better than the whole city being destroyed or submerged by a walking warbling blob of sewage. Daredevil comes to help sometimes, but Peter won’t hold his breath today. He usually only turns up at nighttime, as though evil monsters should work around his busy normal-person schedule and not the other way around. It’s fine. It’s cool. At least he shows up at all, unlike some other unhelpful heroes he could mention but won’t. Because it’s fine.

He’s managed to propel himself into the monster a dozen more times, but this one’s different from the others. This one seems to have its mind set on that bank, because no matter how much Peter pushes it away from that building, the blob slimes the ground and pushes its way back. It treats Spider-Man pushing it like a person would a pesky gnat, ignoring his efforts altogether like he’s not putting his considerable super strength to use against it. At this rate, it’ll take _days_ to shove this thing into the lake. Deadpool’s going to wonder where he is. Did he leave out enough food?

If giant swamp creatures that defy the laws of physics can feel annoyance, then this one must be, because when Spider-Man once again launches himself at it, the beast turns and whacks him out of the air with one of its murky, watery arms.

Spider-Man groans, landing in a heap, wet and soggy and rank enough to wilt flowers.

That’s when his spidey sense flairs.

It screams _threat_ down his spine, has his heart beating wildly.

Without knowing why, he shoots out a web and swings into the air, flying over the blob monster and sticking himself to the bricks of the building beside the bank. He’s breathing hard as his eyes search for the threat, and that’s when he spots the man on a rooftop. His first thought, of course, is that this must be the person behind all these monsters, finally come out of his hidey hole. But that thought is dashed when the large, dark figure yells, “Fire in the hole!” and then immediately launches a _grenade_ at the giant moving sewage heap. Spider-Man sees it happen in slow motion, the moment that grenade bounces off the blob’s back and soars straight toward the person who’d thrown it. The man eeps and swan dives off the roof, but he apparently can’t fly and hadn’t given much thought to how he’d survive the fall because his descent isn’t slowing. Heart in his throat, Peter dives after him, curls an arm around his middle. He catches them both on a web and swings out from underneath the explosion that rocks the rooftop where the man was just standing. He weighs a ton, all muscle, but he squeals like a child in obvious delight with both arms squeezing Spider-Man around his waist, yelling over the rushing wind, “I feel like a Disney princess!”

He swings them over to the next block, away from the swamp monster.

Landing on a roof that’s not being attacked or blown up, Spider-Man drops the man in a decidedly unmanly heap and says, “What the heck was that?”

He picks himself up, brushes himself off.

Now that his spidey sense isn’t going haywire and the blob monster’s busy munching on money blocks away, civilians long since evacuated, Peter takes in the sight of this random unknown and tries to look stern. The man’s tall and broad, his arms and shoulders all muscle even through the oversized black hoodie that’s obscuring his head. Not by much, though – he can clearly see the flimsy plastic Hulk mask that’s covering the rest of his face, those eye and mouth holes cut out to reveal a peek of scarring around the man’s mouth, pink ridges and bumps around wide brown eyes.

The man raises up on his tiptoes and peers around Spider-Man.

“Okay so, my first plan didn’t work,” the man says, his voice gravelly and filled with humor.

Spider-Man stares at him. “You almost blew yourself up.”

He waves a dismissive hand. “I’ve got another idea though! Yes I _know_ that’s not comforting, shut up I’m trying to play it cool! I have great ideas! Sometimes. Uhm. Pretty sure if I get him to eat the grenade, we’ll turn this turd into explosive diarrhea faster than you can say cheap Mexican food.”

“… my career is officially going down the toilet.”

The man giggles. “Feeling drained, Spidey? You’re looking kinda _flushed_.”

“You can’t see – oh.” Peter tries to remember that he’s supposed to be stern. “I see what you did there.”

The stranger claps his hands. “I’d ask if you wanted to hear a poop joke, but they all stink.”

“Oh my god,” Peter blurts. “Stop that.”

“… party pooper.”

The man mumbles it under his breath, but of course Peter can hear it. He can’t help but smile under his mask, amused despite himself. He doesn’t usually have civilians trying to help fight monsters with grenades, but it sounds like he’s got more grenades where that one came from, doesn’t seem to care very much about his own safety if he’d dive off the building like he did before. The man asks if he can help, though, sounding all earnest through that ridiculous green Hulk mask, and fishes a grenade out of one of the big hoodie pockets, twirls it around on one careless finger through the safety pin ring. Nervous, Peter webs the thing away from him and holds it like it could go off at any moment.

“I don’t usually work with explosives,” he says.

“I do, I do!” The man says. He makes grabby hands for it.

“Are you sure you won’t blow yourself up?” Peter would hold it out of reach if he could, but the man’s too tall for him. Reluctantly, he lets him take the grenade back, but he’s wary letting this dude into the fight, unaccustomed to letting civilians help out. If he gets hurt, that’ll be on Peter.

“I swear I’ve only blown myself up like eight times.”

“… Only eight, you say?”

He seems to beam through the crooked Hulk mask like he’s proud of it. Puffs out his chest a bit, lowkey striking a pose. This has to be the weirdest civilian Peter’s ever had try to help him. Not that civilians try very often, but this – this takes the cake.

There’s also not a lot of time to think about it.

“I’ll swing us over its mouth,” Peter says, finally. “And you’ll drop the grenade in. Safely. From a distance.”

“Yay! Spidey-back ride!”

He shouldn’t be doing this, Peter can’t help but think, even as he’s doing it. The man practically skips over to him and hops aboard, gets nice and comfortable on his back, wriggling until Peter tells him to stop, shushes his giggles with an annoyed tone that masks the way his face feels hot, masks his nerves. He knows far too little about this guy, for one thing. For another, this isn’t exactly the safest activity to be letting a civilian help out with. He could have taken the grenade and done this himself, except Peter isn’t a big fan of things that go boom, and this guy seems to know what he’s doing. Well, except for that whole almost-blowing-himself-up part. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, though, how could he have known that things bounce off the blob? It’s not like he was watching Spider-Man continually hurl himself into and then bouncing off it. But it’s no use thinking about it now. He’s got a stranger on his back and they’re swinging into danger one way or another.

He’s going to have to make sure this dude stays out of that danger, is all.

Turns out that’s more difficult than he expects. As soon as they pass over the monster, the man slides off his back like he’s greased up, yelling out an enthused war cry as he drops straight down on the creature. He’d be sliding straight off it, too, except that he catches himself with one hand on the lip of the creature’s strange warbly mouth, impales that hand on one of the beast’s pointy teeth.

“Pew-we!” The man says, hanging by his bloody hand. “Poop monsters aren’t my favorite…”

“What the hell!” Spider-Man says, aggravated, heart in his throat again as he flips midair and swings back around.

“But they’re a solid number two!”

With that, cackling, he unclips the safety, raises himself up on that stuck hand to shove the grenade as far back into the monster’s throat as he can reach, sticking his whole other arm inside the thing’s mouth to do so. It’s the craziest thing Peter’s seen a civilian do to date, so crazy it doesn’t even make sense. His spidey sense is zinging down his arms, warning him to get out of dodge, but he can’t get out of dodge without the man who’s choking the monster with his arm. Brown turd water gargles up out of the creature, and it roars out a strange watery yell, its whole amorphic head shaking back and forth as it tries to dislodge whatever’s stuck on its tooth and hanging inside its mouth.

“I got this!” the man says, flopping this way and that in the air as Peter tries unsuccessfully to grab him on his first pass back around. It’s like trying to grab a fish on dry land, slippery with feces that thing keeps vomiting onto the man’s head and flopping in the breeze. He must not have let go of the clip yet, since the grenade hasn’t exploded, must be holding onto it with his arm down the thing’s throat. “Get outa the way, Spidey! This thing’s gonna blow!”

Spidey drops from above him this time, sticking himself to the man with his webs.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m letting you get blown up!”

“Aw, you care about me!” the man says, voice all panting breaths. “I could swoon!”

He can’t understand how this guy isn’t screaming in pain, that giant tooth sticking straight out the back of his hand, a bloody, disgusting hole. Peter climbs the man and tries to pry that tooth out of his hand, or the hand off the tooth, wincing in sympathy pains because damn this guy’s going to be feeling this once the adrenaline wears off.

“This wasn’t the plan!” Peter says, complaining because this is patently ridiculous. His spidey sense floods all his other senses. _Danger, danger, threat_ , every instinct telling him they need to get out of here _fast_.

When prying isn’t working with this angle, everything too slippery besides, Peter uses his super strength and manages to break the tooth off entirely, punching it until it splinters and cracks out of the thing’s gums. It gives a mighty, deeply disturbing warbling roar, so close it shakes their eardrums, pierces Peter’s sensitive hearing enough to make him flinch. The man must drop the grenade right when Peter’s grabbing him and swinging them into the sky, taking that tooth with them as he holds him by his hoodie with one hand, straining not to drop him through the loose hold on the slippery wet fabric. If he drops him now, he’d be dropping him straight through exploded sewage, because the grenade goes off with a _boom!_ underneath them, spraying chunks of what does look and smell remarkably like diarrhea into the air and plastering it across the unlucky storefronts below.

He lands them on a rooftop nearby, ungraceful as they tuck and roll.

He’s up and grabbing for the man’s hand before he has a chance to sit up properly.

“You’re nuts!” Peter says, feeling a little like he’s about to give a Cap-inspired lecture about responsibility and not being an idiot and sticking with the preestablished plans. For his part, the man lets him grab his hand, lets him hold it in both of his and assess the damage. The tooth is still sticking out of the center of his palm, the skin all mangled around it, a huge gaping hole where flesh should be. He thinks this requires a hospital, knows better than to pull out things that’re impaling you. He feels like this is on him. He should have known better than to involve an unknown civilian with grenades in a monster fight. What if he loses his hand because of this mess? It’s his right hand, too, not that he knows for sure if this dude is right-handed, but – he could have handled this on his own. Should have. Now someone might literally _lose a hand_ because Peter wanted to kill that thing fast instead of taking the time killing it the right way. It’s been a long, happy few years since he’s felt this much guilt, but his streak’s over now, the crushing weight of Uncle Ben’s cautions ringing in his ears.

It makes him angry, defensive. “You almost blew yourself up again, for one thing, and look at this hand! This was not part of the plan, I did not agree to –”

“Aw, c’mon, Spidey, it’s only a flesh wound.”

“It’s going _through_ your flesh –”

“But hey, did you see that diarrhea? Like a bomb went off after a late night –”

Peter breathes out a hard, long breath. “I’m taking you to a hospital.”

The man’s eyes widen behind those cutouts like it’s the worst fate he could imagine. His hand is warm and sticky and red in Peter’s, shaking a bit. Probably from the adrenaline, Peter thinks again. But then he’s pulling his injured hand away, out of Peter’s grip, taking a few hasty steps away to put distance between them. He’s sopping wet, still, smelling as gross as Peter must, and looks a little pitiful in his soggy big hoodie that sags around his shapely muscles, dark brown stains spattered over the black. “I don’t need a hospital,” he says, and his voice sounds certain instead of defensive, no hint of that prideful arrogance that usually keeps people from hospital visits. Just a fact. He sighs in apparent resignation when Peter instantly protests, his shoulders hunching up around his masked face.

Without preamble, the man yanks the tooth out of his hand.

It’s long and jagged and takes junks of flesh out with it. Wide-eyed, Peter rushes forward to web the hole closed, but the man holds up his uninjured hand to stop him, tells him to watch. Right before their eyes, the hole narrows, red fleshy tendrils fusing together in its place, skin knitting back together with a squelching, slick sound. The man wiggles his fingers and clenches his newly mended fist a few times, waves it in the air between them, red with blood but closed and whole.

“See?” he says. “All better.”

“You heal,” Peter says, dumbly. Just like Deadpool, he can’t help but think.

His shoulders are still hunched. He stuffs his hands in his wet pockets, shrugs. “Every damn time.”

“Are you… with the x-men?”

The man guffaws. “They wish! Well, no, they really don’t wish. But no. I’m a free agent, because that sounds way less pathetic than lonely little mutated freak nobody will put up with long enough to claim as one of their own. No I _did not_ just say that out loud, these are totally thought bubbles –” He cuts himself off, tilts his head. “Was I saying all that out loud?”

“I think so?” Peter takes a step back.

“Yikes,” the man says, watching him step away, making no moves to follow. “I sound insane, huh?”

“A little bit.”

“Wait, don’t go yet!”

Peter stops at the ledge of the rooftop. He wasn’t about to leave the – the tiny bit addled, maybe insane mutant up on a rooftop covered in poop by himself in the first place, was only putting up a healthy distance between them. Still, the man’s voice cracks in apparent desperation not to be left alone, and he clears his throat right after he says it, shuffles in place. Peter lets an awkward silence descend between them for a moment, unsure. This man did risk life and limb to blow up one of the poop monsters. Peter appreciates the strange assist. And he apparently has the same ability that his cat has, can heal just like he can. He doesn’t know if the man can do _all_ the things Deadpool can, like come back from the dead, and he doesn’t exactly want to find out. Still, it’s – so random, right? That this person swan dived into existence possibly holding all the answers to the questions he’s been wanting to ask his cat?

“Do you need help getting down from here?” Peter finally asks.

The man’s mouth opens behind his hulk mask. Closes. Opens again. “Nah, Spidey, I’m good.”

“… by good, do you mean you’re going to dive off the roof?”

“Hah… I mean while that sounds like a _killer_ time, no.” He jabs a thumb behind him at the rusted old door beside an air conditioning unit. “I’ll take the stairs.”

“That’s good.” Peter pauses. Hesitates. “Can I ask…”

“I’m Wade Wilson!” the man blurts, words rushing together. “I’ve been watching how you kick so much ass out there in the world with your adorable little tush and the webs and the muscles, oh em gee I could lick those abs and be – wait no, I’m still talking out loud. Stop it, _I know that_ , will you please just – _wait_.” He stops to suck in a breath, shoulders rounding forward. His hands are twisting inside his hoodie pockets and his voice lowers as he mutters to himself. Peter waits and tries not to listen in, tries to focus on the traffic sounds from the streets down below to give the man – Wade Wilson, apparently – his privacy. While he… talks to himself. Peter isn’t sure what’s going on with him, but he seems to be struggling with something, voice all full of anxiety, body language all agitated.

Finally, he can’t take it anymore. Peter takes a step toward him. “Are you okay?”

Wade’s mouth snaps closed, head jerking up to look at him. “Yeah, sure, I’m great! Um – I’m just fine. You wanted to ask me something? Earlier? Ask me anything, I’m an open book! I mean I’m not a New York Times bestseller, but I’m still a page turner. I’d consider myself one of those trashy paperbacks with the half-naked muscle stud on the cover, you know, one of those dime-a-dozen reads that over explains penises and likes to throw in the word moist –”

Peter cuts him off there. “I was just wondering if it hurts to heal?”

“– oh that.” Wade whooshes out a breath. “It hurts like a bitch, but I’ve got a killer high pain tolerance.”

Wade dismisses the question with a wave of that healed hand, uses it to scratch an itch under that plastic mask that can’t be comfortable. Peter wonders if it’s the same for Deadpool, wonders if he feels pain the same way, wonders what it feels like for him to die and come back. He’s always had the thought that it can’t be pleasant, of course, but to have this random stranger confirm that it does, indeed, hurt… he’s reading too much into this. Just because Wade’s body heals in a similar fashion to his cat, it doesn’t mean that they feel it the same way. He really couldn’t make any scientific comparison at all between the two healers besides the fact that they heal. But then he looks closer at Wade, takes in his hunched shoulders and the way that his wide brown eyes keep darting this way and that under the cutouts of the mask. He kind of does resemble Deadpool in those ways. In the nervousness, in the eyes, in the way that he’s trying to make himself seem small even as he’s at least a head taller than Peter. There’s something going on with him, some reason he threw himself into a fight with a giant blob monster, some reason why he’s talking to himself and wearing a plastic mask and nervously asking Spider-Man not to leave just yet. Even after his hand healed, Peter can’t help but notice that he’s – scarred. Not just the palm, but his entire hand is covered in them, reddened and blistered. His spidey sense isn’t pinging that Wade is dangerous, but it might be pinging that he needs help. Somehow.

“I’m sorry it hurts,” Peter says. “And that you got hurt today. I shouldn’t have involved you.”

Wade’s laugh sounds a little strangled. “You are such a cutie, Spidey! I wanted to be involved.”

“You saved me a lot of time,” Peter admits. “But I’m still sorry you got hurt. Look – do you need anything? Do you have someplace safe to go? A home? Somewhere to wash all that – you know, sewage off?”

Wade blinks, all slow and deliberate.

“Do you have a phone?” Peter asks when Wade just continues looking at him.

Wade shakes his head, still moving through molasses.

“Well look – um, hang tight, I’ll be right back.” Peter backflips off the rooftop and swings a few blocks over to the newspaper stand that was across the street from the bank. Newspapers line the street, knocked over and sopping wet, the road blocked off by a couple police vehicles now as they redirect traffic away from the rubble. He grabs a pen from behind the little booth, rummages through it until he manages to find a pack of gum that isn’t covered in sewage or wet from the diarrhea explosion. Swinging back to Wade, who’s still standing frozen in place as though he’d not moved a muscle, Peter offers him a stick of juicy fruit and writes the number to his burner phone on the inside of the wrapper. He slow-shuffles to the still-frozen Wade and grabs his hand, sticks the wrapper into it and closes the man’s textured, pockmarked fingers around it.

“I’ve gotta head home,” Peter says, taking a hasty step back. “I know you said you didn’t have a phone, but there’s this little giftshop over on east ninth street called the Pink Olive that’ll have a phone you can use. Do you know the one?”

The plastic mask squeaks as Wade nods.

Peter grins. “Good. Call me any time, okay? If you need anything. I can help you.”

Wade isn’t saying anything anymore, seems frozen in place. So Peter pats him on the shoulder and moves to leave. He’s worried he didn’t leave out enough food for Deadpool, feels suddenly like cuddling the frenzied cat since he’s learned that healing hurts at least Wade. It probably hurts Deadpool, too. No way getting skewered or cut open doesn’t at least sting, even if the wounds fix themselves near-instantly. As he’s swinging away, though, he hears Wade running to the edge of the rooftop, finally roused from his apparent fugue state. He yells after Spider-Man, “Hate to see you go, love to watch you leave!”

Peter’s grinning all the way up until he walks through his front door.

All the way up until Deadpool doesn’t run to throw himself at him.

“Deadpool?” he calls into the apartment. The TV is on, switched to the news. He sets his keys down on the counter and walks over to the couch, picks up the remote and flicks it off. “I know I stink, but that’s never stopped you before.”

All the way up until he sees the claw marks on the windowsill, sticks his hand through the hole in the screen, sees the scratch marks. Yanking the window open all the way, he sticks his head through the hole and yells Deadpool’s name into the alleyway below, but there’s a stain on the concrete and no movement at all. Peter slumps against the window for one beat, for two.

Their apartment _feels_ empty, darkened and still.

The bowl in the kitchen is still full, wet food left untouched.

Deadpool is gone.

-

-

-

**_too many years ago_ **

“I see you.”

Deadpool froze, mask eyes widening as he spotted the woman who stood against the backdrop of the city, poised on the rooftop with bare toes flexing against the edge. She wore a short skirt, big bright hoodie over it, hanging almost down to the hem of the skirt. Her voice echoed into silence, filled the space. He couldn’t hear the telltale cars passing below, couldn’t hear the muffled sound of people’s voices as they ambled along the street. He was sitting on the edge himself a few feet away from her, his legs dangling off the side, a folded taco dripping its juices onto his suit. Then the woman turned her face toward him, and he knew.

He pulled his mask back down over his face, gulped down the bite that bulged his cheek.

He stood up, dusted himself off. Left the taco on the ledge in its crinkling wrapper.

Rocking back on his heels, hands on his hips, Deadpool squinted at her. “How’d you get all the way up here without me noticing? Are you a ninja, too? I am so impressed right now –”

“I see you weak,” she said, her sweet lilting voice low and firm. “Weak as a kitten left alone in the sewers.”

“Uh… okay.” Deadpool tilted his head at her, one mask eye raised. “Weird way to start a conversation, but I’ve had weirder ones with the voices in my head so. D’you need help getting home? Does your mom know you’re out here chasing down mercenaries, standing alarmingly too close to the edge on tall buildings?”

“You live and you die for no one,” she said.

Deadpool shrugged. Weirdos gonna be weird, he guessed. He couldn’t judge.

Her eyes sparked like lightning that danced across the sky.

Okay, getting weirder.

“I see you weak as a kitten,” she said again. She stepped down from the ledge, bare feet quiet as they brought her toward him. He held up his sticky hands palms out in front of him, a gesture of surrender if there ever were one. Still she approached, shoulders back, head held high, eyes that cracked and sparked and shuddered. He’d wondered if he’d been on a coke bender and didn’t remember it, wondered if this was another hallucination brought on by guilt. Which, stupid. He didn’t _feel_ guilty. This chick’s dad was a bad man he’d earned a pretty penny offing. The world got to be a slightly better place without him around and Deadpool got to eat his weight in tacos for the next three decades straight if he so chose. Win-win. Nothing to be feeling _guilt_ y over. It didn’t explain why he was hallucinating her on that rooftop or why her eyes kept going wonky like electricity, but it at least definitely wasn’t because guilt.

[Maybe it’s indigestion.]

[[Could still be a coke bender we’ve forgotten about.]]

[Nah, indigestion. We ate _so many tacos_.]

“Alone in the world,” she said. “I see you weak and alone and ugly forever.”

“Okay, now you’re just hurting my feelings.”

She smiled. “Do you have those?”

Deadpool pouted out his bottom lip, clearly visible through the mask. “Fuck you very much, I’ll have you know that under these well-toned pectorals beats the heart of a _feeler_. I cry on almost all the Grey’s Anatomy episodes, especially those ones where the old farts impart a life lesson on the surgeons before they croak on the table. I mean don’t get me wrong, the ones where a family member or one of the surgeons die are totes heart wrenching, but I wept for literal hours when old lady Clatch died in her bed and her husband sat there holding her hand. He was such a sad little old man, oh em gee I’m tearing up thinking about it, also I think the dude who played him died in real life, and that’s –”

He yanked a crumpled tissue out of his utility belt and lifted his mask to blow snot into it.

“Let’s – let’s get you home to your mom,” he’d sniffled.

But she stepped closer, lowered the hood on her hoodie. “My father might have had his flaws –”

Deadpool choked, tried not to splutter.

[Flaws, ha!]

[[Nice way to spin _serial rapist of minors_.]]

“– but he was _mine_ , and you killed him when he was vulnerable and alone. He was sleeping and you –” She stops to suck in a breath, shakes her head. There’s a hard edge to her voice, her loose dark hair standing straight up like she’d gone through a dry cycle, all static and energy, twisted face frozen on the kind of smile you’d see in cheesy horror flicks. _He’s_ usually the cheesy villain in these things, she’s totally stealing his role right now, this isn’t fair – “You killed him when he couldn’t defend himself, so now you don’t get to defend yourself. You’ll live as he died, weak and alone. See what it’s like to rely on the kindness of others and not get it. Who will care that you’re gone? Will anyone notice at all?”

[She’s got you pegged, champ.]

[[She’s also super melodramatic, did we get sucked into a soap opera –]]

[Shhhh, she’s still monologuing!]

“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t think so. You’re a murderer and a cheat and there isn’t a soul alive who’d miss you. Your powers are wasted on you, he who lives and dies for no one. I see you burning in hell every time you die. Death won’t be the peaceful break it once was. You’ll come to hate it. But life won’t be much better.”

Then, louder:

“All that I see comes to pass on he who lives and dies for no one.”

“… the fuck?”

So it turned out the serial rapist he’d killed that morning had a mutant for a daughter. A pretty fucking powerful one, as evidenced by the lightning that flashed down from the clouds and cackled in her eyes, over her hands, up her arms. She apparently loved the son of a bitch, too, enough to grab Deadpool by the arm and force that controlled lightning zinging through his central nervous system, enough to smile as his limbs went limp and he crumpled to the roof, seizing. White and Yellow turned into white noise, ringing laughter echoing in the darkness.

And then there was only fire.

Burning. Fire. That burned.

Deadpool screamed until he didn’t recognize the sound anymore.

Then he opened his mouth and meowed, instead.

The witch smiled, picked him up by the scruff of his neck, her hand all electric and cold. He was too weak to move, disoriented, mewling out strange noises he couldn’t have made a minute ago, trying to speak but incapable. She held him off the side of the roof, wished him a good luck, and then tossed him into the night.

She was right about one thing. He would come to hate dying very much indeed.

He’d learn she was right about the rest, too.

Every. Damn. Word.


	5. we're okay

5\. we're okay

-

-

-

Wade should have known it was too good to be true.

When he woke up in that alley under Spidey’s window with limbs that felt too long and awkward and a voice that croaked on words stuck in a decidedly _human_ throat, of course his first reaction was instant elation, relief, unbridled excitement. He’s human again! The witch’s curse broke and he didn’t know how but he also didn’t care because HUMAN. Also because there’s a cute super fighting sludge downtown, and he needed to get there stat. So that’s what he did. He hightailed it in the buff to the nearest clothing store, traumatized some random citizens with his hot _human_ bod in the process, stuck one of those kid masks on his face to cover up his gross, and sought out his old hidey holes. Three were completely empty, ransacked and trashed, but the fourth was stocked with all sorts of goodies. Guns, knives, cash… _grenades_. He couldn’t _wait_ to give those guns of his the cleaning of their _lives_ , couldn’t wait to dive into being actually _human_ and doing human things. Pizza! Tacos! Coke benders!

[[Sex!]]

Oh em gee, sex! It’s been – phew, _way_ too long.

[Sex with Spidey?]

[[HA! No way! He won’t give us the time of day now that we’re – ahem. _This_.]]

[You don’t know. We were gross as a cat too, but he still cuddled us.]

[[Okay sure, but now we’re gross and BIG. Totally un-cuddle worthy.]]

Wade tells them to shut up, but he’s too happy to care much when they ignore him and keep jabbering. Elation follows him all the way into battle, where Spider-Man proves to be just as good and cute and genuine as he’s been to cat!Wade this whole time, only now Wade can be heard and talk back and it’s – okay, a lot to process. He’s maybe kind of sucking at knowing when he’s talking and when he’s thinking and when the two overlap, especially with Yellow spewing insults every two seconds and White crying like a lost kid in the background. Still, nothing matters because Spidey talks to the crazy grenade-throwing mask-wearing mutant-healing stolen-clothes-wearing loony toon who talks to himself as though he were an actual human-shaped person who’s _human_ , and Wade’s left on the roof covered in poop, sure, but he’s chewing a wad of fruity gum in a mouth capable of gum-chewing, popping bubbles around lips that can blow them.

Even better, he’s got a wrapper with his baby boy’s _digits_ on it.

Cloud fucking nine, okay. Cloud. Fucking. Nine.

He spends the rest of the day riding that cloud, too. He uses the cash from his hidey hole to buy clothes that fit better and don’t stink, sneaks into one of those ritzy gyms to shower and change into them. Jeans that hug his decidedly human package, v-neck black tee, bright yellow unicorn hoodie because it looked like sunshine in the window of the department store and it hides his scars under a thick cotton layer of sheer _happiness_. He buys new boots, laces them up with only a slight delay, has to reteach his fingers how to move correctly. They feel big and gangly on his hands, much like it’d feel if sausages were attached to his palms. He shakes his hands out to feel his fingers move through the air, marveling at the sensation, loses time to it. Wade doesn’t miss being a tiny weak little cat, _no way_ , but shit, the opposable thumb thing sure ain’t a walk in the park on this side of the curse. Maybe he should invest in some velcro sneakers in the meantime…

But he should have known it was too good to be true.

Good things and Wade Wilson mix like oil and water.

Priority one, above even finding someplace habitable to live, is to call Spidey. Text Spidey. Call Spidey? Definitely call. He’s too impatient to text, wants to hear that voice, wants to talk to him and be heard by him and exchange legit words. He wants to _hear_ that smile that lights up Peter’s voice. So he buys a phone, smooths out the wrinkles on the gum wrapper and saves it as his first contact. Does he have a good excuse to call Spider-Man?

No. No, he does not.

Does this stop him?

Also no.

“Spidey!” he yells into the phone. He bounces a bit on the balls of his feet.

And ahh, there’s that smile Wade’s been missing, right there in a laughed breath. “Wade!” he says back. There’s some shuffling in the background, a muffled voice. Peter murmurs that he’ll be right back to somebody, more muffled voices, then there’s footsteps, a door opening and closing. Silence. Wade eyes a rat that’s nosing around in the corner of the dank little closet he stashed all his Deadpool shit in, pokes at its fat belly with a mop handle. It barely twitches, nose buried in a stolen cracker it’d nicked from somewhere nearby. There’s holes all up in these walls, of course. The cracker could have come from anybody’s apartment in this dank little crusty old building. The problem isn’t that the rat exists. The problem, Wade finds, is that he’s suddenly fixated on the little squeaks it’s squeaking, suddenly alert and honed in on each twitch. There’s a hole in the wall inches away from the rat’s position. He wonders if he can catch it before it can escape into the hole, wonders how fast it is comparatively to his now-bulky, less agile species. Is it normal to want to pounce on the thing? Consume it whole? Has his human self always wanted to do that?

“… you still there?” Peter’s asking in his ear.

Wade shakes his head. Swallows around nothing. “Yeah, yes, sorry! I was – there’s just this – but never mind, I’m here!”

“That’s good,” Peter says. “I’m glad you called.”

Wade squeaks. “You are?”

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering how you are? Did you make it home okay?”

The rat twitches its nose upward, now, ears cocked. Beady little eyes gleam in the darkness.

Wade’s throat itches. He clenches his eyes shut.

[Kill it, kill it, kill it –]

[[Bite its face off and steal its cracker –]]

“I’m –” _How is he?_ Wade thinks very suddenly that maybe he’s not okay. Focus, Wade. It’s time to focus. Peter’s on the phone and he’s got his _number_ and he’s _human_ , he’s human which means he cares more about impressing Spidey’s cute caboose than he does about the rat that’s staring up at him and taunting him with its squeaky little nibbles… “– just peachy keen, jellybean. Um, you know, I was thinking – I’ve got the whole mutation thing going on, and it’s just collecting dust. I could help with your patrols sometimes?” He doesn’t give Spidey a chance to refuse before he’s pressing forward, eyes clenched tight as he grips the phone in a white-knuckled fist and rambles out words he’s pretty sure are actually coming out of his mouth. “I’ve got a better costume, don’t worry, the jolly green giant won’t come after me for copyright. The hulk mask does in a pinch of course, but green isn’t my color. In reality, red hides the blood better, and I’m not trying to look like a Christmas tree. But like, I can help fight all the poop goops and you won’t have to worry about me getting hurt or whatever. I mean even if I _had_ gotten blown up earlier, I would have grown back. Definitely didn’t have anything to worry about on that end…”

“Um, wow,” Peter says into the silence. His voice isn’t smiling anymore. There’s some shuffling in the corner of the room, rustling of old papers, maybe, or like the rat is munching away. Yellow keeps yelling at him to kill it but maybe if Wade keeps his eyes closed, he can pretend it doesn’t exist. Spidey sounds surprised, maybe, voice soft and hesitating as he says a stilted, “Sorry, this usually goes the other way around. You know, me offering help instead of having it offered to me? I’m not sure what to say, here.”

“You could tell me to dress warm ‘cuz it gets drafty on rooftops at night?” Wade suggests.

Peter laughs, which is just _fireworks_. The sound makes Wade’s heart thump.

“Don’t you already have your own _better costume_?” he wonders.

“Oh, right.” Wade pauses. “Well, you could tell me to bring tacos.”

“… to fight poop monsters? I don’t think I’ll be hungry.”

“Excuses, excuses.” Wade’s fingers feel weird, gripped around the phone. Big and clumsy. He peeks an eye open and immediately zones in on the rat, who’s made a little nest out of old news papers in the corner of the closet, has crumbs scattered around it. “C’mon, Spidey,” he whines, breathing a little shallowly in the darkness of the closet. There’s a floorboard loose near the rat where he’d originally stashed his supplies, the hole in the floor home to a few knives. It’d be a human reaction to stab the rat. He could do that. Easy peasy lemon squeezy… except his hands feel weird and itchy and he wants to lunge at the thing with claws instead of knives, wants to sink into that flesh with his own –

He doesn’t have claws anymore.

Great. This is – this is great.

[We were crazy before… now we’re just sad.]

[[Kill it, kill it, I wanna sink my teeth into –]]

[It’s almost funny how insane we are right now, even I’m creeped out by us –]

Peter’s been talking this whole time, Wade realizes. Peter’s saying something right now. But all Wade can think about is how nothing feels right and everything feels too small, he’s too big, the rat’s too small, his hands ache, they aren’t right, nothing is –

“Um, gotta go!” Wade squeaks out, finally, around a too-tight throat. Peter stops talking on the other end, asks him if he’s all right with that all-too concerned tone. His voice is all soft and kind and if Wade doesn’t pounce on that fucking rat in the next ten seconds he’ll come apart at the seams – “You just think it over! Kay love you bye!”

He’s dropping the phone and scrambling for the rat before he’s even realized he just told Spidey he loves him.

Something happens in that moment. In the moment between the phone and the corner. One second he’s still – still him, still Wade Winston Wilson, gross-ass broad-shouldered human. Then the next second, mid-pounce, his whole body just – just _shrinks_. Bones crack and pop, burned-up skin stretching and pulling, all in the span of an instant, until the room looks big again, until he’s tangled up in a too-large yellow sunshine hoodie, scrambling legs trapped, buried in heavy jeans.

He’s hissing and merowing at the clothes, fighting to untangle himself.

Breathing hard.

He’s still caught in the hoodie, squished head poking out of one arm hole, before he stops to catch his breath and realize –

He isn’t human anymore.

He’s – he’s a cat.

Again.

 _Fuck_. _Fuck fuck fuck_ –

-

-

-

So it turns out that Wade’s mutation doesn’t absorb magic the way a normal person’s body might have. He’d figured, maybe, that he’d broken the curse by “living and dying” for Peter, since it’d broken when he’d willingly jumped to his death to help the boy. He’d never been able to become human before that moment, anyway, so clearly _something_ must have broken or mended or – or did whatever it needed to do in that moment to change things. And maybe, if he were a normal person, the curse would have concluded then and there. But the fact of the matter is that Wade’s not a normal human. His cells don’t function right in the first place, constantly fighting cancer, constantly regenerating, like cells on speed but way more painful. Throw magic into the mix… well, it turns out _this_ seems to be the result.

It becomes apparent _real quick_ that certain things set him off.

He’ll be human one minute, see a bird, and then a cat the next.

Human one minute, oh what is that amazingly fishy fish smell that smells like fish –

Cat again.

It’s _incredibly inconvenient_.

Especially since he’s trying to be there for Spidey, joining patrols and fighting those gnarly poop beasts and even occasionally convincing him to eat assorted foods on various rooftops. They text all the time, now, usually Wade sending cat memes (which have taken on a whole new meaning) and Peter sending pop culture ones back. But they’ll talk, too. Spidey never gives out anything personal, usually, and Wade doesn’t have much of anything personal he’d care to discuss, so that works out fine. He’s got a whole list of topics he’s been wanting to talk about for _months_ while he was stuck as a cat, anyway, starting and ending with how horribly horrible that Supernatural ending had been and hypothetically speaking, what would a person need all those random wires and metal odds and ends that’re scattered on every available workspace in Spidey’s apartment, anyway – not that he tells Spidey he knows they’re there, because he knows that’d be _chaos_.

He can’t quantify how many times he’s been tempted to return home as a cat.

It’s an _ache_ under his tiny little ribcage.

He wants to go home.

He wants to burrow his head into Peter’s lap and rub his cheek against the solid warmth of his thigh. Wants the head scratches and the rubs and the – the _belonging_ , if that was what he’d had in that quaint little apartment Peter shared with him freely.

He – he misses Peter.

Spidey’s great, but – but it’s not Peter-cuddles in the dead of night great. It’s not the same.

But it’d be a mistake. Now that he’s human, now that he can be human, returning as cat!him would feel too much like a lie. Like a deception he couldn’t ever justify. Peter deserves more than to be strung along by his cat. Wade should have told him a long time ago, honestly. He should have come clean on day one, maybe try to laugh about it. Like, _hahaha, did I ever tell you about that time where I was a cat and I was_ your _cat and I maybe liked to watch you jerk off in the showers…_

Nope. Nope, not telling. Wade can never tell him.

No matter how he swings it, it’s a bad idea. Because not only did he spy on Spidey’s unmentionables for months and months, not only does Wade know Spidey’s secret identity without his permission and has been lying to him about it ever since this whole thing started… but also, Spidey misses Deadpool. He misses that gnarly annoying cat enough to talk to _Wade_ about it, random comments here and there that just – _compound_.

If he found out that Wade’s been Deadpool all along?

That while he’s been making all those sad faces, telling all those stories about the cat –

That Wade _was_ that cat? All along? And has just been – listening like he isn’t?

So he doesn’t tell him. He keeps it all tucked away where it can’t interfere with the good they’ve got going on, and he doesn’t tell him. What starts out as Peter reluctantly letting Wade tag along on patrols soon morphs into Peter calling him up asking if he can come help with this bank robbery down on sixth and Broadway, and Wade doesn’t tell him. He’s got – he’s got a friend in Peter. He doesn’t want that to blow away on the wind, smoked out by Wade being a lying liar who lies. When he’s a cat, he stays away, tucks himself into a hidey hole that’s small enough to curl up in, blocks out the whole world until his body calms down enough to go human again. It’s enough to have Spidey’s friendship. He – it’s _more_ than enough. It’s _magic_. The good kind that never hurts. Good things never last, but Wade thinks that maybe, just maybe, he can force this one into lasting. So long as Spidey never knows he’s been deceiving him this whole time, that he _was_ that cat that Spidey sometimes talks about, sometimes says he misses – as long as Wade stays quiet, maybe he can keep this.

That’s a lot of maybes.

But maybes don’t mean _nos_ … and Wade’s good at living in the grey.

And so goes his strange, budding friendship with Spider-Man.

-

-

-

Two weeks before Valentine’s Day, Spidey texts to meet on their usual rooftop an hour earlier than the norm and to bring food. Wade responds with a row of rainbow hearts and three rows of taco emojis. Since Spidey doesn’t reply back with any token protests about getting sick of the constant tacos (impossible!), he takes that as consent for their meal choice. Buys four sacks full because between the two of them, they can tear _up_ some tacos, and maybe he’s hoping to goad the boy into another taco eating contest for which there is no beating Wade. Although Spidey got close last time, Wade has the advantage of being able to eat until his stomach literally bursts. All’s fair in love and food wars.

[Duudddeee, we would _excel_ on Cake Wars.]

[[Duudddeee, do you even know us at all? We’d fucking suck on that show.]]

[Fight me!]

[[If we even _did_ manage to bake a cake, it’d splat before it even made it to the podium.]]

[Fight. Me. You. Mother. Fucker.]

[[Me _row_.]]

Spidey’s already there when he arrives, sitting on the edge with his feet dangling off the side.

He’s listening to music, shoulders bobbing, humming to himself the same way he’d do all the time in the apartment back when Wade lived with him. Wade throws a sack of tacos at the back of his head and giggles when Spidey leans to the left to avoid it, letting it go over the side of the building. A lazy web catches it before it can splat into smithereens. Spidey grabs the sack when it sails back up toward him and nudges Wade’s shoulder with his own when Wade plops down beside him.

“I’m not participating in any eating contests,” Spidey says right away, obviously spotting the three other giant sacks that are weighing down Wade’s lap with greasy goodness. Wade pouts through his mask, lips puckered so Spidey can see.

“C’mon, Spidey, you know you wanna beat me.”

“I also know I won’t. Same way I know you’ll never sneak up on me.”

“… At least I still _try_.”

Spidey’s laugh is unrestrained and just _adorable_. Wade’s mouth stretches into a grin before he’s even aware of it. He could bottle that sound up and sell it on the black market for beaucoup de dough. Spidey rifles through his sack and pulls one of the wrapped tacos out, crinkling the paper as he unravels it. He pauses there, seems to be thinking, those impenetrable white mask lenses staring at the cooling soft tortilla as though it contained the answers to the universe. Honestly, it might. There’s nothing that can’t be fixed by a late-night taco run… except maybe the actual runs, but he’s kinda met his quota on poop jokes for the next three or four decades. Wait, is he saying all this out loud right now? Is that why Spidey’s staring at him instead of pulling up his mask to eat?

But then Spidey takes a breath.

He pulls his mask up over his nose, hesitates with his hand there.

Yanks it up and completely off in one fell swoop.

“I want you to meet my friends.” Peter’s lips are moving, words seem to be happening, but Wade’s struck dumb, his own mask eyes wide and shocked. It’s the first time he’s seen Peter since – since he was the boy’s pet, and his hair’s grown out a bit, frames his face in loose untamed curls. His lips are quirked up as though he’s not sure he should be smiling and he reaches up to run a hand through that beautiful head of bedhead, messing it up even more. Peter’s eyes dart away from Wade to glance down at his opened taco. He picks at a stray piece of lettuce that’s sticking out of the tortilla, glances back up. Wade’s still slack jawed, his heart racing.

Then the words catch up to his brain. He swallows. “You want me to – what now?”

“Meet my friends,” Peter repeats.

Wade shakes his head. Whaps himself across one smooshed ear. “Sorry, I think I’m having a seizure. Were you talking to me or were the boxes just being assholes, they do that sometimes, okay all the times, but I’m pretty sure –”

He sucks in his words, because Peter reaches over and sets a firm hand on his arm. Gloved hand against the fabric of Wade’s suit, but he can feel his warmth through the materials, can feel the way he grips his forearm and squeezes, a reassuring, affirming pressure.

“I was talking,” Peter says. His voice is soft, his smile crooked. “White, Yellow, you guys don’t get to be assholes right now, you hear? I’m Peter, by the way. Peter Parker. I was saying that I want you to meet my friends. We hang out a lot and I’m always wishing you were there because you’d get a kick out of the stuff they say, or the movies we watch, or just – out of any of it, really, because you get a kick out of most things? Ned’s been bugging me with all these poop jokes because hardy har har, Spider-Man’s nemesis these days is just so unbelievably stinky… But so, I got sad when you weren’t there last time, and I got to thinking… well, why _aren’t_ you there? You’re my friend same as they are. I don’t even have to keep my identity from you to keep you safe because _you can’t die_ , like I felt like I had to do with all my other friends for the longest time. So there’s just – there isn’t a reason to keep you all separate, and I don’t want to anymore. I trust you, so. You should be there.”

[[… if you don’t ask this adorable little creampuff to marry you, I’m revolting.]]

[You’re _already_ revolting.]

[[… screw you… that was actually kind of smart. Still, screw you.]]

[I agree with Yellow on ALL COUNTS. I’m smart, and you need to marry this boy, oh em gee.]

[[Get down on one knee right now! Propose with a taco, it’ll be on brand!]]

Wade’s been silently gaping too long, it seems. Peter sighs and shifts in place a bit, glances back down at his uneaten taco. “I mean, if you wanted to be there. But if you’d rather not, that’s fine, too, I was just –”

“NO!” The word erupts from his throat like a geyser. Wade shoves the sacks of tacos off his lap and presses himself into Peter’s side, squeezing him around the middle and holding on tight, not that he needs to hold on tight because Peter welcomes the sudden embrace, laughing as he hugs him back with those firm, strong arms, all warmth. His heart feels like it’s being squeezed in a vice, but fugly big mostly-reformed mercenaries don’t cry over tiny stupid things. His eyes are sweating. It’s hot under the suit, hotter still with Peter’s heat pressed close.

“No takebacks,” Wade mumbles into Peter’s shoulder.

Peter laughs again. “I guess this is a yes?”

Wade sniffles. Sweating, sweating, sweating. “This is a _hell yes_ , take me home and keep me forever –”

“You’re saying that out loud, you know.”

But Peter’s not moving away.

“Oops,” Wade says, not meaning it at all.

-

-

-

He spends Saturday morning panic-shopping and then panic-cleaning and then panic-changing before Yellow reminds them all that he’s disgustingly unattractive no matter what he wears, so dark big hoodie and plain comfy sweatpants it is. He tries jeans a few times, but it’s a bad skin day, and the material itches so bad he can’t sit still. The last thing he wants Peter’s friends to think is that he’s got ants in his pants (okay, maybe not the _last_ thing. Wade can think of way worse things they’re undoubtedly going to think about him no matter what he wears or doesn’t wear, not that he cares). Comfort over style.

It’s just a relaxed, casual movie night at Peter’s.

When he trudges up to the innocuous beige door that had become so familiar to him on the other side of it, he’s sweating and flighty and a whole hour early. Before the boxes can persuade him to bolt, which wouldn’t take much convincing, Wade bangs his fist against the door to the tune of an older Britney Spears song. Takes a step back and sucks in a breath. Holds it the same way he’s holding five giant six-foot long sandwiches under one arm. They’re a mix of ham and turkey, pepperonis intermixed, wrapped and chilled.

When the door opens, it’s Peter standing there instead of Spider-Man. Which of course, Wade expected. Of course it’d be Peter. But conceptually knowing it’d be Peter and _actually seeing_ that it’s Peter must be two very different things, because Wade’s jaw unhinges a bit and he’s staring with wide white mask eyes at how perfectly tousled those pretty brown curls are, and at the way Peter’s eyes crinkle in the corners when he smiles. Pulling the door open further, Peter gestures him inside and shows him where to set the giant sandwiches, on the kitchen counter between a few bags of unopened chips and a few dirty dishes. Peter grabs the dishes up and plops them into the sink, pieces of old food stuck on them and all. Then he’s poking a finger against the shrink wrap on one of the sandwiches, laughing. Wade stands a few feet away with his hands stuffed in his pockets, wishing he’d brought his gloves, but also simultaneously wishing he weren’t about to be the only dumb fuck wearing a mask in a room full of strangers who are bound to have something to say about that.

“You brought giant sandwiches,” Peter states the obvious.

Wade says, “I brought giant sandwiches.”

“Why did you bring giant sandwiches, Wade?”

Is it not normal to bring giant sandwiches when you’re invited to somebody’s home? He’s never been invited to anybody’s home before. He’s crashed plenty of parties, invited himself over to Weasel’s place a time or two… but to be invited to a friend hangout? With normal people? He’s got holes in his memories, years his brain’s erased, but he’s pretty sure even in high school he’d been that totally unapproachable class clown slash troublemaker people enjoyed at a respectable distance only. Legit _friends_ isn’t something he’s ever been too good at attaining or keeping. He knows he can be – kind of a lot. It’s completely outside his realm of experiences. Not that he’ll admit it. So instead, Wade shrugs with his shoulders bunched up to his face and fiddles with a loose thread in one of his hoodie pockets, tries to play it cool. He can be cool. He can totally fake being a well-adjusted human person who can have friends and be invited to friend hangouts.

[Fake being the keyword, here.]

[[This is painfully awkward. You’re so damn painfully awkward, brah.]]

[I’m feeling secondhand embarrassment already and nobody’s even here yet.]

[[On another note, it’s our old couch! It still smells -]]

[I wanna run around the room in a circle!]

[[And lookit, Pete’s kept our old toys!!]]

There’s a small pile of them on the floor beside the end table. Wade keeps his eyes off of them, feels uncomfortable in his body. It’s too big, takes up too much space, he’s – this isn’t good.

“Who wouldn’t want giant sandwiches, Peter?”

Peter laughs again in the face of his too-serious tone. “Good point. C’mon, make yourself at home. Everybody else should be here soon…”

Also, Peter kept the cat jungle gym.

Wade’s trying not to look at it, at those all-too familiar wood planks that decorate the walls.

He’s feeling – he’s feeling –

Peter must see him looking. “Those were for Deadpool,” he says, looking at them too. His eyes aren’t crinkling anymore, his whole face softening into something melancholy, something quiet and sad. “I keep hoping he’ll come back, or I’ll find him somewhere. He could – I mean –” He hesitates, looking across the space between them. Seems to steel himself. “I never told anyone this because I didn’t want anything to happen to him, but you have the same sort of thing going on so I know I can trust you with it. Deadpool could heal, too. Like you can.”

Wade knows all this. Doesn’t want Peter to talk about it because then he’ll feel like a lying liar who lies again when he has to pretend to be hearing about it for the first time. But shit, what else is there to talk about? He’s never had this much trouble coming up with something to talk about before, but as he makes his way over to that familiar, welcoming old mustard yellow couch with the claw marks _he_ gouged into the fabric, he suddenly can’t find any words. He sinks into the cushions and can’t bring himself to feign shocked awe that Peter’s cat could heal. Can’t bring himself to do anything except listen.

“So at least I know he’s not dead.” Peter’s smile is a bitter, bitter thing.

Wade swallows, fidgeting on the couch. He knows he’s supposed to contribute here, to say something. Peter’s looking all sad and it’s entirely his doing. He should change the subject to something less sad. Maybe talk about plants. Peter could get a plant. Something that won’t run away, something big and green and – but then it just makes Wade think of burying shit in the soil, like small rodents or turds. He’s thinking more cat than human right now, is the problem, because it turns out returning to his kitty home is doing things to the control he’s worked to acquire these last few months. He’s gotten better at it, too, at controlling where and when the shift happens. Wade could probably keep it under control even now, even sitting on his old cat couch surrounded by _his_ toys and _his_ jungle gym, with _his_ beautifully gorgeous human standing all sad and melancholy a few feet away. He should, too. Peter won’t want to know this. Peter won’t want to know that his newest friend and his old cat are one in the same, won’t want to know that they’ve _both_ been deceiving him all along. Especially right before Wade’s about to meet his friends, those ever elusive friends he’d never even met as a cat. Peter had kept them away from him. Must have done so purposefully, since they apparently spend so much time in Peter’s apartment now that Deadpool isn’t around to cramp his style.

Peter’s talking, comes to join him on the couch.

He turns on the TV and makes himself comfortable even as Wade sits at stiff attention on the opposite side of the couch, fidgeting with the sleeves of his hoodie. Part of him belongs here. Deadpool belongs here. Wade – Wade doesn’t. He’s an outsider in his own head. It feels like Wade doesn’t even belong in his own body right now, too surrounded by everything he’s been missing since he was tiny and cat-shaped fulltime. Peter’s warmth is close enough to where if Wade tilted sideways, his head would land into the boy’s lap.

“You don’t have to be nervous, you know.”

Wade side eyes him. Twitches. “Nervous? Who, moi?”

Peter’s smile is crooked. “It’s also okay to be nervous. Understandable.”

“Pfft, no nerves here, Pete. I’m always this twitchy.”

“You’re definitely not always this quiet, though.”

“… you’ve got a big brain.”

“C’mon, Wade, you know me and I know my friends. They’re going to love you.”

It takes a concerted effort not to rock back and forth. Or laugh in Peter’s perfectly pretty face. Or do both at the same time. Instead, Wade clutches at his hoodie sleeves and focuses on breathing, on staying human. Thinks about human things like giant sandwiches he couldn’t eat as a cat, like skipping and singing and talking and the TV, some show about lawyers and explosions. His brain isn’t in the mood to cooperate, though, and keeps circling back to Peter, whose lap looks awfully inviting out of the corner of his eye. Even without Yellow and White arguing in the background, his brain won’t listen to him.

“Hate to break it to you.” Wade clears his throat. “But you’ve got pretty high expectations for this shindig. People don’t _love_ me. Might I suggest _tolerate_ as a better measure of success? I might be able to hold it all together enough to be tolerated, but like, that’s a pretty big might. Maybe we should just reschedule altogether? Today’s a little rainy outside, we’d be saving all your friends from wet heads –”

“They’ve got umbrellas.”

“White seems to think –”

“No.”

Wade freezes. Finally turns to look at Peter, who’s scooting across the couch and grabbing him by the arm, no, not grabbing him, he’s – linking arms with him, leaning his head on Wade’s stiff unbendy shoulder. “… no?”

Peter’s huffed breath feels warm through Wade’s hoodie. “No. White and Yellow don’t get to have opinions right now. They always suck.”

“They don’t _always_ –”

“Doesn’t Yellow think crocs are stylish?” Peter asks, all patient.

“… I mean, aren’t they though?”

“That’s not the point. The point is that you’re welcome here. I want you here, my friends have been excited to meet you, all we’re doing is watching movies and eating giant sandwiches, apparently. You’re okay. Okay?”

Peter’s trying, Wade can tell. It does funny things to his beat-up old heart, how hard the kid’s trying. Sliding over to press himself into Wade’s side, linking arms like they’re some old married couple, head on Wade’s shoulder like a mutated merc belongs in this sunny little apartment, like he could ever belong in Peter’s sphere of people. But no matter what Peter says, no matter what he does, Wade can’t shake that this feels all wrong. He’s not supposed to be here like this. Skin all itchy even against a smooth cotton blend, sweat slick under his mask… his skin feels tight, too, stretched taut around body parts that are too big for this room. Something feral and panicked longs to dart under the couch and pee. His heart’s racing and he feels like he needs to get up and pace or run in those circles he used to run in this very same room. Wide eyes track the path his smaller other-species self used to take around the room. He wasn’t like this before. Pre-cat, pre-experimentation, pre-lab rat… he wasn’t always this way. Anxious about meeting people. He’s never cared this much what people think of him. But if these particular people don’t like him, he loses Spider-Man. He loses Peter.

Throat tight, Wade manages a nod. Manages to say, “Okie dokie.”

They watch TV in silence, Peter’s head on his shoulder.

He thinks maybe it’ll be okay.

When a knock sounds at the door, though, his brain just – flails.

Everything’s all tunnel vision, the world too big and too small at the same time. One second he’s sucking in a breath and staring across the living room at the door, listening to muffled laughter coming from multiple people on the other side of it… and the next, it’s like it was in that closet when it first happened, only ten thousand times worse because he’s scratching at the mask that’s pulled around his much smaller head, merowing in a blind panic in the darkness of the heavy leather, hissing at his own clothes that now drown him in fabric. And Peter’s – there’s a voice, it’s Peter’s voice, it must be, but Wade’s cat brain suddenly can’t process words and when he’s touched, when hands come down and struggle to unbind his flailing self from all the clothing, from the hoodie and the sweatpants and the mask and the boxer briefs… Wade chomps down through the hoodie and manages to catch Peter’s hand in his jaws, teeth sinking into warm flesh.

Peter’s talking, or yelling, or whispering –

Wade tastes blood through the fabric and panics again.

Wrenching himself away, he falls in a heap to the floor and crawls under the couch, taking the sweatshirt with him. At least Peter must have gotten the mask off his head, because he can see now, can see with his wide, slit cat eyes that he’s under Peter’s couch, under _his_ couch. Chest heaving, Wade hisses at the sweatshirt and wrestles with it in the small, cramped space, tearing through it with his claws as he fights and flails and fights some more.

“– give us a minute,” Peter’s saying, sounding far away. More muffled voices.

Then – then there he is.

Peter’s sideways face as he lays on the floor and stares under the couch at him, lips downturned, eyes wet. Wade presses his ears flat to his head and meows, mournful and low, trembling where he’s curled up.

“Deadpool?” Peter’s voice wobbles. Then, softer: “Wade?”

Wade feels like he’s coming apart, can’t stand that sad look in Peter’s eyes, can’t stand to see him – he’s crying, isn’t he? Those are tears Peter’s shedding right now, he’s crying because his cat’s a liar, and a mutated freak, and his new buddy he said he _trusted_ has been knowingly withholding a pretty big piece of information from him, and –

“Pretty kitty,” Peter whispers. One hand stretches out toward him, slow and shaky. Wade eyes it and his head bows low until his chin bumps the floor. His whiskers twitch, he wants to slink forward and lick that hand, wants to lay in Pete’s lap, but he’s – he’s ruined this whole thing, he couldn’t keep himself together and now it’s all ruined, Peter probably wishes he’d never invited him here, wishes he’d never –

“You’re okay, Wade,” Peter’s voice cuts through the tunnel vision, cuts through the hazy mess of sorrow and fear. Deadpool meows at him, meows because that’s all he can do, that’s all he’s got, and Peter’s face looks so sad he can’t bear to stay silent in the face of it. Peter croons at him like he used to when he was only a cat, pats the floor with his hand as if beckoning him closer. Wade thinks he’ll be thrown out as soon as he’s within reach, can very visually imagine that sad face morphing into disgust as he kicks him to the curb. He’d deserve it. He does deserve it, this happy little life was never meant for someone like him, anyway. Peter’s voice doesn’t sound disgusted, though, doesn’t sound mad. If anything it’s gotten softer as he whispers, “Deadpool. You’re okay, _we’re_ okay, you have no idea how much I’ve missed you, or maybe you do – I guess you do know, but you don’t have to be scared, sweetie, you don’t have to be – if anything, I should have figured this all out on my own. I mean, you showed up the day Deadpool disappeared with the same mutation he’s got, and it’s not like I’m not well accustomed to weird by now. You’ve got a home here, still, of course you do, if you wanted it, we’re okay, promise –”

Let it be known that Wade Wilson’s got the self-control of a lemon.

Wrapped up in Peter’s pretty words, in his sweetly earnest voice, those silent tears in the corner of those warm brown honey eyes, Wade Wilson can’t control himself. With a meow that sounds like it’s ripping itself out of his throat, he’s slinking out from under the couch and knocking his head into Peter’s, rubbing his scarred, scabbed head against Peter’s tear-stained cheeks, chest rattling that unfamiliar rumble as he catches Peter’s choked laugh and licks his pretty face with his coarse, rough tongue. He’s half-expecting Peter to throw him off, to shove him away, to say it was all a trick to get him out from under the couch. Instead, the boy wraps the warmth of his arms around him and picks them up off the floor, pressing his face into Wade’s patchy fur and breathing in deep.

“God,” Peter mumbles it into Wade’s fur, the vibration warm and real. “You’re okay.”

He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself.

Wade butts his head up against Peter’s chin, licks his neck, tastes salt.

Then Peter’s laughing, a choked laugh, full of wonder. “No wonder you said you loved me almost the first time we talked. I thought you were just – um, you know, earnest. A fan. But you’re Deadpool. All along, you’ve been –”

He shakes his head. “I love you too, you goof.”

He says them so easily, those loaded words, no hesitation, all confidence. Wade squirms in his arms and meows, meows, meows, suddenly craving a voice and human arms that can hug back and instead all he can do is lick and rub his head against Peter’s throat, rumbling that deep purr that makes Peter smile. When a hesitant, soft knock sounds on the door once more, they both freeze in place like deer in headlights. Peter’s arms tighten around him.

“Uh, Pete?” a nervous, uncertain voice says through the door.

A deeper, louder voice then: “You alive in there?”

Another voice comes, this one less nervous, higher, an amused sarcastic twang lacing every word. “I bet he’s boinking his new friend’s brains out.”

Wade stares wide-eyed at the door, Peter giving an anxious little laugh above him.

“Oh my god,” that first nervous fellow groans. “Why would you say that?”

“You’ve _heard_ Peter waxing poetic over this dude, right?”

“Okay but did you have to say it like –”

Furious banging on the door interrupts the whining complaint. The deeper voice accompanies it, all laughing, bright tones, “Far be it from me to get in the way of your sexy times, Pete, but if you leave me out here with these two goons, I swear –”

“What, you’d rather join the sexy times?”

“No, fuck no, that’d be – okay, _gross_ –”

His friends continue their good-natured squabbling. Peter hasn’t let him go, arms tight around him, and when Wade butts his head up against the boy’s chin again, Peter looks down at him with a bashful little smile, red in the face, eyes crinkling in the corners. He swallows and says, “Um… I don’t suppose you’ll forget you ever heard all that?”

[NOT ON YOUR LIFE, BUB.]

[[NOT ON WADE’S LIFE, BUB.]]

[RIGHT. NOT ON WADE’S LONG ASS LIFE, BUB.]

[[Okay we can stop calling him bub now, let’s not accidentally summon Wolverine –]]

[Can we sit on Spidey’s face now?]

Peter does eventually tell his friends that now isn’t a good time after all, and that they should probably reschedule because something’s come up. The one with the deeper voice named Harry wonders if the thing that’s _come up_ is Parker’s _dick_ , to which Peter groans and hides his face into Wade’s fur. White and Yellow are clamoring for the chance to speak, talking over each other and squealing intermittently. Wade would be squealing, too, if he could, but he’s pretty sure Peter’s friends are just joking as friends do, pretty sure Peter hasn’t actually been _waxing poetic_ to them about someone like _Wade Wilson_. Still, it’s nice to imagine, nicer still to be cradled in Peter’s strong arms and cuddled close, nicer _still_ when his friends’ voices fade as they depart and Wade realizes that Peter isn’t kicking him to the curb, isn’t kicking him out, isn’t telling his creepy ass merc friend to scram and never come back.

Wriggling, Wade leaps down and runs a few laps around the living room.

Peter leans against the kitchen counter, munching on one of the sandwiches.

“Can you transform at will?” Peter asks.

Wade runs another lap and stops to meow, shaking his head.

Runs some more.

He’s not scared like he used to be, though. Not running his fear out, his panic. Something’s settled, now, at Peter’s easy acceptance, at that soft, earnest voice telling him _we’re okay_. He runs because he’s – excited, elated, he’d be skipping if he were human, singing an offkey rendition of something bouncy and light and carefree. Somehow this isn’t ruined yet. Peter watches him run like he’s something wonderful, that smile of his warm and bright and there because of _Wade_. It makes him feel light and warm and bright, too, makes him want to be – better. More. He lopes through Peter’s legs and rubs himself against his pants, purring.

Peter reaches down, picks him up.

Walks them to the bedroom.

He lets Wade jump from his arms and walk in circles on the bed, finding a comfortable spot near the pillows and curling up there, meowing when Peter retreats, but he’s only stopping into the bathroom, shuts the door so Wade can’t follow. When he returns to the bed, he’s in pjs and he’s grinning. He plops beside Deadpool and rubs a hand over the cat’s back, scratches behind his ears.

“You’re a scoundrel,” Peter accuses, but he’s grinning, still, laughter in his eyes. “You watched me shower! And… do other things. In the _shower_.”

Wade perks his ears up. Tilts his head. How can this revelation be so – _easy_?

“I’m gonna have a lot of questions when you’re Wade again, you know.”

Wade ducks his head and merows.

“Not bad questions,” Peter adds quickly. “We’re okay.”

 _Yeah_ , Wade thinks to himself. It’s still early into the night, but Peter covers up and turns out the light, rests a light hand on Wade’s back as Wade curls across the boy’s chest and his throat rumbles his contentment. Nothing’s ever this easy. He’s sure it won’t stay this way. Questions, Peter said. He’s got _questions_. They’ve still got to find who’s responsible for the poop monsters, if Peter allows Wade to help after all this. But for now, in this moment, in this tiny slice of life where someone as kind and as heroic and as good as Peter Parker cuddles someone like Wade, rubs his patchy fur, smiles at him in the dark like he’s happy he’s here, happy they’re together, happy Wade exists –

 _Yeah_ , Wade’s sluggish brain thinks again. He yawns and rests his head on Peter’s chest, paws kneading Peter through the boy’s loose shirt.

 _We’re okay_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end. It's most certainly open to random little continuations here and there, as I love writing precious cat!Wade, but as of now I have zero plans to write more in this universe.
> 
> Much thanks to everyone who's left me a comment, or a kudos, or who's encouraged me in some way. I appreciate it so much... thanks for all my readers who've come along on this short little ride (I did it! I wrote a short thing! Kind of...)
> 
> Hopefully I'll see you all next time. <3

**Author's Note:**

> Happy new year... another WIP for me! You should know that I plan for this one to be short. See that chapter count? Short. It's going to be short, okay.
> 
> S-H-O-R-T.
> 
> Thanks for reading. <3


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